Almost $770 million (28,000 billion rials) has been allocated for the renovation, maintenance, equipping and standardization of schools in the current Iranian year (started March 21), said Morteza Raeisi, head of the Organization for Renovating, Developing and Equipping Schools.
Pointing to government support for the national school development plan, he said mere financial support is not enough and “we need public cooperation to extend the plan to schools across the country.”
He noted that 700 newly-built educational centers would be commissioned by the end of the current year (March 20, 2016). About 20% of the financial assistance for the new academic institutions will come from donors, Raeisi said, adding that there “will be no shortage of schools and educational institutions” in the next academic year.
Meanwhile, over 20,000 schools in the country have been covered under the ‘Schools’ Health Plan’, implemented by the Ministry of Health.
The $5.4 million plan seeks to inform parents and school faculty in healthcare activities so as “to cleanse both the school environment and students’ health, and to motivate the public to contribute to developing schools,” ISNA quoted Dr. Mojtaba Yamani, head of the ministry’s Students’ Health Office, as saying.
“Preventive action against health-risk behavior and monitoring physical and mental wellbeing are among the programs that are to be implemented with the help of students, parents and school officials,” Yamani said
Special training sessions and informative materials will be available for the schools covered under the plan, he said, and hoped that more schools would be brought under its umbrella.
“No educational center should be left without health coverage,” he stressed.
Such programs seek “to make people think of schools as their own homes and to carry out voluntary services, thus contributing to the development of educational centers in the country,” Yamani added.
