Iranian Education Minister Criticizes UNESCO's Gender Equality Agenda

The Islamic Republic’s Education Minister is criticizing UNESCO’s 2030 Education Agenda for promoting “gender equality,” labeling it as contradictory to Iranian culture.

The minister, Reza Morad Sahraei, continued his criticism, telling the state-run Tasnim news agency that the document was "dictated from outside" and, under the administration of Ebrahim Raisi, is "completely cut out of any planning process."

The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a set of standards developed by UNESCO that provides children and young people with a basic understanding of the environment, human rights, and the elimination of discrimination in society.

The UN General Assembly adopted the document in September 2015 with the goal of improving the quality of education worldwide. The document was signed by member states, who agreed to anticipate the financing needed to improve education, prevent child abuse, and promote gender equality.

While the Iranian government signed on to the document under former president Hassan Rouhani (2013-2021), it was not implemented after Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei explicitly criticized it, claiming it promoted the "defective, destructive and corrupt Western lifestyle."

In a speech at a 2022 UNESCO summit, the country’s current President, Ebrahim Raisi, described the 2030 Education Plan as "one-dimensional and secular." He said the Islamic Republic had drafted its own “transformation” document based on “Iranian-Islamic educational philosophy.”

A year later, Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution (SCCR) announced a resolution called the "revocation of the 2030 document." SCCR is a regime policy body responsible for developing and formulating scientific, educational, religious, and research strategies. In 2023, the EU and UK designated this unelected body accountable exclusively to Ali Khamenei.

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the state has relentlessly attempted – and failed – to indoctrinate Iranians with its Islamist ideology through the country’s education system.

Following the significant involvement of the young generation in the nationwide anti-regime protests in 2022, the state initiated "purges" targeting thousands of staff within the country’s educational system, aiming to remove individuals perceived as threats.

Scores of teachers who supported the protests were expelled, and many were forced to retire early, while 3,500 clerics and seminarians have instead been hired as teachers instead to fill some of the tens of thousands of new positions created to deal with the shortage.

An education ministry spokesperson, Ali Farhadi, has stated that the ministry only learned about the recruitment after it had occurred. “We, too, found out that these individuals had been accepted [for the positions] after the examinations [of candidates for teaching positions] were held,” he claimed.

Regime-run media, however, has been advocating that clerics become teachers for months.

Despite the fact that the clergy have operated unofficial schools before, lawmakers hastily approved a proposal in January to have the Ministry of Education issue licenses to persons and legal entities wishing to establish private schools attached to mosques if they meet certain building requirements.

A gender-specific school curriculum and textbook changes were also discussed by Education Minister Reza Morad Sahraei in November.

Against this backdrop, teachers claim the regime’s policies and changes have transformed the country's schools into “religious and military bases”.

A December interview with Khabar Online, a domestic outlet, reported teachers' concerns about plans to "shift schools away from their primary function,” stating that ideological and religious studies have taken over most of the content of the school curriculum, even science, causing students to lose interest in the subject.