October 14, 2022
The construction of about 10 percent of Iran’s schools is paid for by Iranian expatriates, according to Nasser Ghofli, the director of the School Building Donors Association.
The Islamic Republic, which routinely underfunds education, has long relied on funds donated by philanthropists to pay for much of the school construction program. Ghofli said that many of them are expatriates. He didn’t say how many were Iranian-Americans, but such contributions are not banned by sanctions.
Contributions from donors have grown substantially in recent years, which is accelerating the process of school construction, Ghofli said.
Over the past year, 30 trillion rials (about $100 million at the open market rate) has been allocated to school construction and renovation by the benefactors, he said.
According to Ghofli, 400 school-building charities have been registered in the country so far.
Merola Rakhshanimehr, director of the Organization for Development, Renovation, and Equipping, said in August 2020 that some 30 percent of the country’s schools have been constructed by school-building benefactors.
There are some 107,000 schools nationwide with 530,000 classrooms, 160,000 of which are dilapidated, not meeting safety standards, the Tehran Times reports. Some 30 percent of the schools nationwide are old, of which some 12 percent must be completely rebuilt and 18 percent must be retrofitted, it said.