🗣 Your Account: “Forced Help” Demanded from Some Parents in Public Schools — Monday, 30 Shahrivar

🔹 The principal at one of the schools in a village near Mashhad set a condition for handing over the books: he would only deliver them after parents provided a payment slip showing a payment of one million tomans, even though most families are struggling with financial problems.

🔹 In Tehran, public schools do not hand over the books to students until they receive the multi-million-toman “forced assistance” to the school, and the children are humiliated.

🔹 I am 15 years old and I am a student at a gifted school. When they told us that my tuition this year is 40 million tomans, I couldn’t bring myself to ask for a notebook or even a blue pen for me. I even blow ink from my friends’ pens into my own pen to write one more word.

🔹 The tuition for the Fravaneh (Daughters’) Schools in Tehran—which are for Samad (gifted) and also public—is 40 million tomans last year, but this year they said it is 80 million tomans. The service/transportation cost is separate.

🔹 I study at a gifted school. This year they said the school tuition is 40 million tomans, and at the time of enrollment they forced us to pay 7 million tomans.

🔹 The Samad Schools organization has announced that tuition for students in deciles 1 to 3 is free, but at the time of enrollment they took the full tuition from the people without considering the decile.

🔹 The illiterate education minister of the Ministry of Education says every day that public schools have no right to take tuition from students. Today, 29 Shahrivar, when we went to enroll in a public school, they took 10 million tomans from us by force and with threats.

🔹 In Ardabil province, some “model public schools” ask for a lot of tuition from students, and we truly do not have the ability to pay.

🔹 For registering the schoolbooks, an obligatory 800,000 tomans is collected, and without paying, book registration is not possible. What should families do if they cannot afford to pay? Public schools also collect fees of more than 5 million tomans. Education is the children’s right—not a privilege for the wealthy.

🔹 In this tragic economic situation, the Azadegan High School located on Hجاب Street in Tehran collects 25 million tomans from every student for enrollment.