Signs of Anxiety Emerge as Teachers Retire

Retirement of 640,000 personnel at the Education Ministry by 2025-2026, among whom more than 75% are teachers, is the primary concern of the ministry since new teachers and staff to replace them should be appointed in a phased manner over the next eight years after appropriate training and recruitment.

Esfandiar Chaharband, director general of the Tehran Education Department, pointed to the  plan to recruit 14,500 teachers and non-teaching staff in the new school year (starts in September) since “some staff will be retiring this year.”

He put the total number of personnel currently at the ministry at 928,000, of which 575,000 are teachers (including preschool).

Among the 552,000 plus teachers, 48% are primary school, 25% are elementary, and 27% are high school teachers, according to the latest figures released by the Planning and Human Resources Department at the ministry.

Referring to their qualifications, he said, “Less than 1% (1,246 teachers) have a doctoral degree and among them 78% teach in high school,” Salamat News reported.

According to Chaharband, the teachers’ average years of schooling at the three levels of primary, elementary and high school, is 15.3, 16, and 16.6 years, respectively. Most of the teachers have a bachelor’s degree (38%) and 34% have an associate degree (undergraduate academic degree awarded by universities upon completion of a course of study lasting two years).

Giving a statistical break-up of teachers’ qualifications, he said at the high school level, 978 teachers have PhD, 46,411 master’s degree, 91,683 a bachelor’s, 6,419 an associate degree and 708 have high school diploma. In total, there are 146,200 teachers at the high school level.

In elementary schools, 192 have PhD, 19,227 a master’s degree, 101,471 a bachelor’s degree, 18,935 an associate degree, and 439 have high school diploma.

At the primary school level, 76 have a PhD, 16,486 have a master’s, 16,723 a bachelor’s, 162,527, an associate degree, and 70,031 have high school diploma.

There are around 13 million students studying in Iran, seven million in primary and around 3 million in elementary schools. More than two million study in high school.

  Salary Hike for Teachers

Chaharband pointed to salary hike for teachers and said the average salary of teachers has seen 85% increase, after President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013.

The budget for implementing the revised salaries was allocated by the Management and Planning Organization (MPO).

In 2015, First Vice-President Eshhaq Jahangiri notified the government’s approval on the “evaluation system of teachers” to the Education Ministry and the MPO for implementation.

According to the assessment plan, teachers were categorized in four ranks: basic, senior, expert and excellent, and accordingly got 15%, 25%, 35% and 50% increase respectively in their salaries.

The budget for implementing the raise in wages in the previous fiscal year (ended in March) was $1 billion.