TEHRAN – Officials of the Literacy Movement Organization have announced that the literacy rate in Iran has reached 97.1% in the age group of 10 to 49 years, media reports said on Sunday.
Nearly one year after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Literacy Movement Organization was established on the order of the late founder of the Islamic Republic Imam Khomeini with the aim of eradicating illiteracy.
At the time, more than half of Iran’s population over the age of six was illiterate.
Before the Islamic Revolution, a great number of children was deprived of attending school. With the baby boom of the following years, the number of illiterate people increased.
After the revolution, eliminating illiteracy and promoting cultural independence, and educational justice became the centerpiece of the literacy movement.
At the beginning, the gap between literate males and females was 23.4 percent, which fell to six percent.
The general mobilization plan for literacy which began in 1990 boosted the literacy rate to 97 percent in 2023.
In 1990, more than 4.1 million illiterate people were educated within a decade, and in 1996, the literacy rate in Iran reached 79.5 percent, up 18 percent.
In 2015, 2016, and 2017, the figures reached 84.6 percent, 84.8 percent, and 87.6 percent respectively. In 2021, the figure was 90.5 percent in the age group of six and older.
These figures show a 42.5 percent increase in literacy rate after the Islamic Revolution.
In 1976, 48.8 percent of those aged 10-49 (about 51 million people) were literate, while the figure was 94.7 percent in 2016, a 46 percent growth, reaching 97.1 percent in 2021.
To achieve educational justice in urban and rural areas, 55 percent of literacy activities were allocated to rural areas in the past 39 years. As a result, the literacy index in deprived areas of the country increased from 65.4 percent to 90.8 percent.
At the same time, the literacy rate in rural areas increased from 30.5 percent to 78.5 percent.
In other words, the literacy rate increase in rural areas was accelerated and the difference between rural and urban literacy rates decreased from 34.9 percent in 1976 to 12.3 percent in 2016. The figure changed to 11 percent in 2021.
Meanwhile, the literacy movement did not fail to consider foreign nationals, especially Afghans, as some one million refugees have become literate in the past years.
Over the past years, the Literacy Movement Organization has implemented projects to curb illiteracy among foreigners, prisoners, soldiers, parents of illiterate students, employees, workers and female breadwinners.