Several students in Tehran staged a large-scale protest in front of the Ministry of Education building on Tuesday, June 2. They were protesting a mandate by the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution regarding the definitive impact of academic records (GPA) on the Konkur (national university entrance exam), under conditions where remote and online schooling over the past few months had been delivered at the worst possible quality. Speaking to IranWire, several protesters pointed out that under wartime conditions, they lacked the opportunity for regular study and adequate preparation for final exams and that, therefore, enforcing a definitive GPA impact could diminish their chances of success in the entrance exam.
The student protests in Tehran took place following similar demonstrations over the past two weeks in other provinces, including Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, South Khorasan, North Khorasan, Hamadan, Lorestan, and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad. However, in most of those instances, suppression was what awaited the protesters.
"This is my year of destiny. Through all the hardships and high prices, I did everything I could, but what did it amount to in the end? The state of schooling was such that, I swear to God, not a single day was I able to listen to a class from beginning to end. It was either disconnecting and reconnecting, or there was no connection at all, or it was slow, or the power was out. To whom should we take this complaint, that nothing was normal, yet the test, the Konkur, and everything else are expected to be normal?"
