investment in early childhood education: iran’s experience

As there is a rational relationship between children’s life before coming to formal education system with participant at kindergartens and pre-primary centers, we need to look at the historical process of early childhood education (ece) in iran. ece in iran dates back to the early years of the twentieth century, but it accelerated only recently (mofidi, 1997). the first preschools were set up by christian missionaries in iran in 1919, which were mostly attended by children from the rich families. in 1924, recognizing the growing importance of ece, the government prepared and ratified the bill to regulate their operations and conferred the first permit to operate a kindergarten in tehran in 1931 (madandar arani & kakia, 2011). the rise of the islamic revolution in 1979 led to many changes in the goals, management, and methods of establishment of many social institutions and organizations. ece centers were no exception. although before revolution the establishment and administration of ece centers were mainly under control of private sector, nowadays 14 institutions and organization are involved in ece, each of which has its own rules and regulations. according to the latest bill of the iran’s parliament, determining the educational indicators, content of curricula and monitoring of ece centers is responsibility of the ministry of education but the license of establishment issue by the state welfare organization of iran. along with demographic and political changes, we have seen a slight increase in the rate of enrollment over the past four decades, so that in the year 2015, coverage rate has risen from 38% to 64% in 2017. at present there are more than 48,000 teachers who working at ece centers with different levels of educational qualifications and competencies. the budget allocated by the government to ece centers in 2016 and 2017 were 50 and 55 billion rials (usd 1,533,000 & 1,687,000) respectively. using a comparative approach, the present paper investigates developments of ece centers over the past four decades in terms of private and public investments. the first part of the article gives an overview of the historical evolution of centers before the revolution. the second part refers to investment’s rule and regulations under administration of four iran’s presidents. the third section addresses the level of government and private investments. the paper ends with discussion and conclusion.