teachers, produces educational materials, and upholds and develops infrastructure. Education is supervised through provincial authorities and district offices at the local level. Iran’s expenditure on education is higher than the global average. According to UNESCO, 17% of government expenditure in Iran went to education, a relatively high number compared to the global average of 14.3%. Early marriage is one of the main contributors to the school dropout rate, as Iranian regulations limit access to school for married children, as they are only allowed to participate in final exams, and are not eligible to attend classes or night schools. Child Labor Iran’s Labor Law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 15. Children aged 15–18, referred to as “young workers”, are required to undergo regular medical exams by the Ministry of Labor to be eligible for partaking in the workforce. Furthermore, employers are prohibited from assigning youth to “overtime work, shift work, or arduous, harmful or dangerous work”. However, the Labor Law allows businesses with less than 10 staff members to be exempted from certain law provisions, including maximum work-hour requirements, overtime pay, and disability benefits. Iran has ratified the International Labor Office (ILO) convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor. Despite some judicial safeguards to prevent the exploitation of children, Iran has been criticized for its high number of child laborers, and many cases of exploitation have been reported by human rights organizations. Figures regarding the number of child and youth laborers vary. According to the 2011 national census, more than 900,000 were not in schools between the ages of 6 and 14 years. Some of the most common reasons for not being in school were reportedly due to early marriage and child labor, leading to dropouts. There is currently no official data on the number of child laborers, with the most recent official figures available from the 2011 Iranian national census. According to the 2011 census, there were 68,558 child laborers aged 10 to 14, and 696,700 aged 15 to 18. According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), up to 3.1 million of Iranian minors are not in school, of which half are in the workforce. In the official census of Iran in 1996, more than 4% of the working population of Iran was between 10 – 14 years old. In these statistics, the working population of Iran was 14.5 million people, so