No matter Afghan or Iranian, all children must have equal access to education
Bridging education gaps: a glimpse of UNICEF's efforts in ensuring equal access to education for Iranian and Afghan children.
A child is a child, no matter whether Afghan or Iranian. They must all have equal access to education,” emphasises Ms Zahra Mansour Kiani, manager of the remedial classes programme in Shiraz, Fars province. A combination of factors, including not benefitting from the pre-primary and schools' readiness programmes, being bi-lingual, and the interruptions in education services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have created some learning gaps for Iranian and Afghan refugee students.
To address these challenges, UNICEF supported a programme through which more than 1,500 Iranian and Afghan refugee children in several provinces with high numbers of refugees, benefited from remedial school classes and received stationery and hygiene kits.
Pointing to the remedial classes in Fakhr-ol Alsadat Tavassol School in Shiraz, Ms Kiani adds: “Here, Afghan children, alongside the Iranian children, benefit from the high-quality education and can catch up with their lessons in case of learning loss. In addition, they are provided with hygiene packs and nutrition.”
Supported by financial aid from the EU’s Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), UNICEF worked with the Ministry of Education, the National Migration Organization, and Relief International to implement the remedial classes programme in six provinces with a higher number of refugees including Fars, Isfahan, Khorasan Razavi, Semnan, Sistan and Baluchistan and Yazd.
Eleven-year-old Setayesh, a fourth grader at Fakhr-ol Alsadat Tavassol Primary School, is one of these refugee students pursuing her dreams of becoming a physician. “I want to treat the people of my country so that they all have a healthy life.” An Afghan refugee, she came to the school with her nine-year-old brother and grandmother to collect the educational and hygienic packs.
At the end of the course, each student received stationary and hygiene kits to prepare them for the next scholastic year.
In the other corner of the country, in eastern Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi province, one of the districts with the largest refugee population, two students share the same dream as Setayesh. Narges and Fatemeh, 17, are studying experimental sciences at Moghtadri Toosi School on their path to joining medical universities.
Fatemeh, a passionate admirer of medicines, already has her sights set on the university she wants to attend. "I want to get into Ferdowsi University in Mashhad to study pharmacology. It's an amazing experience to explore and create new medicines, to guide people on how to use them and make them healthier." Meanwhile, her close friend Narges aims to become a dentist and acknowledges, "I know I must work hard to reach my goal. It's a tough field, and these [remedial] classes really boost my studies."
As the class ends, Afghan and Iranian students surround their teacher for some extra discussion on when and how to hold their next session. At the same time, the local NGO volunteers, accompanied by the UNICEF and Relief International staff, prepare educational and hygiene packs to distribute among students.
Through UNICEF-supported remedial courses conducted from March to May 2023 to cover the students’ learning gap, each student received at least 30 hours of additional class time in different subjects, including Farsi, Mathematics and Science.
