Al-Monitor | Rohollah Faghihi: Mohammad Bathaei, Iran’s controversial education minister, can finally claim some victory in gathering bipartisan support for his campaign against the country’s educational book publishers. During his two years in office, the 55-year-old former teacher has managed to ban supplementary books from schools, claiming that they are “detrimental” to the school curriculum. These books are one of the main sources of income for private educational book publishers.

Bathaei also announced, on Jan. 2, the partial end of "the konkur," Iran’s highly competitive national university entrance exam. This, too, will deliver another blow to the publishers who earn millions in test preparations for the multiple-choice exam that is taken by millions of high school graduates every year, after intense preparations.

Bathaei’s battle against homework at schools is another blow. In Iran's elementary and secondary schools, most of the homework is assigned from — and solved with the help of — supplementary textbooks rather than official textbooks. Banning homework — as Bathaei did in September 2018 — means that these textbooks will no longer be necessary, depriving private book publishers from another chunk of their revenues.

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