The Council of Cooperation between the Ministry of Education and the seminaries has reported an agreement according to which a group of public schools in Tehran province will be managed under the supervision of the seminary of Tehran. In accordance with this new program, a member of the clergy will be permanently stationed in each school, and all the cultural and education programs will be supervised by clerics. The goal of this program is "to be active within the framework of the religion and the principles of the Islamic Republic [of Iran] and to spread the ideology of the Guardianship of the Jurist." This program will gradually expand to include more public schools each year.
There is a long history of clerical involvement in Iran's educational system. Prior to the establishment of modern schools, all levels of education in Iran were supervised by the traditional clerical system, from the elementary level to higher education at seminaries. A variety of traditional sciences, including natural sciences and mathematics, were taught in the seminaries in a manner compatible with Islamic theology.
