The ‘Golden Insurance’ plan for teachers will be officially announced in the coming month.
It will be based on joint sharing by the insured and the government, and will comprise of four packages, each designed to meet different needs of the teaching fraternity, said Education Minister Ali Asghar Fani on the occasion of Teachers Appreciation Week (May 2-8), in a live television interview.
Fani also pointed to the problems of ‘contract teachers’ who are not permanently hired by the education ministry and attend classes only part-time when a regular teacher is absent from duty, and said: “At present, their major demand is payment of salary pending for the last three months of the previous year (ended March 20),” Alef newspaper reported.
Noting that the education ministry has seen a 23% budget hike, Fani maintained “in spite of the government’s special attention to education, the funds are still insufficient.”
“Notwithstanding the financial constraints, contract teachers will receive their pending dues soon,” the minister said, adding that “The government has compensated for the inadequate funding and necessary directives will be forwarded to all provinces immediately.”
Fani admitted that the ministry had a budget deficit to pay the salaries at the end of Bahman month (Jan 21 – Feb 20); indeed, “we must plan the ministry’s budget in advance in line with the rules of Civil Services Management.”
Investment Fund
“Members of the teaching community have benefited from more than $333 million (11,000 billion rials) in recent years through various schemes,” Fani said, referring to the Teachers Investment Fund, from which withdrawal of the original investment is possible at any given time.
More teachers will be recruited this summer through examinations. Although the ministry has sufficient human resources, “in the long run, organized distribution of teachers according to gender, professional field, and geographical location is crucial.” For instance, the gender distribution in Tehran is 81% (women) and 11% (men), while the distribution among pupils is: 51% male, and 49% female, “representing a pattern of inflation and deflation in dissemination of human resources.”
The biggest problem was three years ago when the 6th grade “was hastily added to the primary school” without preliminary preparation “facing a void of at least 48,000 teachers for this grade,” Fani said.
In line with the Farhangian University provisions there are two channels of teacher recruitment. One is the nationwide entrance exam (Konkoor), and the other is to recruit from among university graduates through examination and selective interviews.
Farhangian University
Farhangian University (University of Teachers Education), founded in 2012, pursues two objectives: educating teachers, and improving current teachers’ performance. With ongoing revision in school books, the university is in charge of updating and educating more than 1 million teachers across the country. The first round of Farhangian (teachers) graduates will enter the educational system in the next 17 months.
Last year, approximately 40,000 seats in non-state run schools were assigned to disadvantaged students at the expense of the ministry. “Non-governmental organizations (NGO) participated in staffing around 1,000 state-run schools last year; thus, 140,000 students received schooling,” Fani added.
