The Effects of Population Growth on Quantitative Indices of Education in Iran: The Prospects of Student Population up to 2030

The Effects of Population Growth on Quantitative Indices of Education in Iran: The Prospects of Student Population up to 2030 M. Amiri In recent years, population experts have started to add the “level of education” as a variable to their demographic analyses. To analyze the dynamics of the student population and its prospects for the next 15 years, factors such as number of registered students, the accessibility of different levels of education across different ages and genders, as well as gender parity index are utilized. The results show that during the recent decades the Iranian student population has been increasing steadily up to the middle of the 1980’s from where a decrease can be detected. This is mainly due to the general increase in birth rate during the previous two decades and the following steep decrease. Despite the steady increase in total population, the school age population has decreased from 30.4% of the total population in 1986 to 18.4% in 2011. According to the UN estimates this figure will decrease to 14.6% in 2030. If the registration levels are maintained at an average, the student population of 6-17 years olds will be 12,461,249 in 5 years’ time, and 11,071,393 in 2030. If the same registration level is maintained, in 2030, despite the doubling of the general population as compared to 1986, the student population in 2030 would be the same as then. That is because the majority of the population would be old and beyond the school age by then. Key words: population dynamics, school age population, registration level, educational level, population prediction