News Center – Teachers' Day in Iran has arrived this year under exceptional circumstances that the Coordination Council of Iran's Professional Teachers' Unions describes as among the "harshest stages" the country's education system has ever experienced.

The Coordination Council of Iran's Professional Teachers' Unions issued a statement on the occasion of Teachers' Day in Iran, which falls on May 2, highlighting the harsh conditions teachers are living under in the country – from arrests and security pressures to difficult economic conditions, in addition to the loss of a number of teachers and students over the past year.

At the outset of its statement, the council pointed out that Teachers' Day comes this year as Iran's education system passes through one of its most bitter and repressive periods. The past year witnessed a wide wave of repression and arrests, along with the fall of victims among teachers and students during popular protests or amid war and regional tensions, leaving permanent gaps in many classrooms.

The statement explained that a large number of teachers faced security summonses, interrogations, and imprisonment over the past year, instead of standing before the blackboard. Students also lost their lives in the streets during crackdowns, or under shelling and war, including victims of the Minab elementary school incident that followed American military attacks – which the council considered a stark example of how children's lives and futures pay the price for power struggles.

The statement noted that scenes of empty classrooms, seats whose owners never return, abandoned school bags, and graves without bodies are all living evidence of the scale of violence that has afflicted a generation deprived of both the right to life and the right to learn simultaneously. It also pointed to the killing of a number of teachers over the past year.

The council noted that education in Iran is no longer a public right as it should be, but has become a class privilege, and that the events of the past year have dangerously deepened this path. Despite that, the statement stressed that education still stands thanks to the determination of teachers who continue to defend human dignity, justice, and everyone's right to free and equal education.

At the conclusion of the statement, the Coordination Council of Iran's Professional Teachers' Unions saluted all teachers who have kept the flame of awareness and equality alive despite harsh conditions, affirming that Teachers' Day is an occasion to renew commitment to a more just and free future, and to strengthen faith in the possibility of building a better tomorrow despite the darkness of the current stage.