🔶 "Mahar Gran"; How much does it cost to go to school in Iran?

Report by Daniel Babiani

Elham, a resident of Tehran, went to the market a few days before the start of the school year to buy stationery for his son. His son will enter the fourth grade this year. He says that from the beginning he decided to buy only the necessary items and not to go for expensive items, but the price of a few simple pens was beyond his expectations.

He said in an interview with Deutschhall Persi: "I bought a pen, a colored pencil, a pencil and an eraser with two notebooks of 60 sheets, it was one million tomans. "I just bought the highest quality items and tried not to buy expensive items."

But of course, it's not all shopping for a student to start school; Bags and stationery, ink and other stationery, clothes and shoes and travel expenses can make the final figure much higher.

On the eve of the new school year, various reports were published about the increase in the price of school supplies. Estimates vary depending on the type and quality of the goods, but an on-the-ground estimate cited by Mehdi Yerushalmi, an expert at the Institute for International Economic Studies in Vienna, calculated the cost of an average basket of stationery and school supplies to be 13 to 15 million tomans; Does not include uniforms, shoes, books, school services and other education expenses.

Yerushalmi said in an interview with Deutsche Welle Farsi, if we use the figure of 13 to 15 million tomans as a basis, the cost of preparing just one student for school can consume a large part of the monthly salary of a minimum wage worker.

According to him, "preparing this basket for a student is approximately equal to 78 to 90% of a month's basic salary."

According to Yerushalmi, the basic monthly salary of the workers in 1405 is about 16 million and 625 thousand tomans, and also considering the salary benefits, the cost of purchasing school equipment constitutes a considerable share of the monthly income of a low-income household.

For families with more than one child, the numbers keep growing. If we refer to the same average basket for each child, Yerushalmi calculates the cost of stationery and basic necessities for two students at around 26 to 30 million otmans and for three students at around 39 to 45 million otmans.

This data does not yet include clothes, shoes, books and transportation. But many families are not necessarily able to provide such a complete basket.

📌 Read the full text of the report on the DW Persian website.