An Assessment of the Jurisprudential and Legal Foundations of the “Document of Fundamental Transformation of Education”

The right of education contains a special position and makes special responsibilities for governments and families in all countries and in all legal systems. To pursue and enforce this right, especially in case of children, countries have made a commitment for themselves and other influential agents in the form of domestic, regional and international instruments and laws in various forms. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, too, the implementation of this right has always been on the agenda in the form of special laws and regulations; however, it has been pursued on the basis of the “Document of Fundamental Transformation of Education” since 2011. As just a few years have passed since the approval of this fundamental document and a detailed study of the various dimensions of the document seems necessary to validate its various special dimensions, this study is intended to review the jurisprudential and legal support of this transformation document, and provide corrective suggestions as much as possible. The results of this library-analytical research, illustrated that considering general titles of legal principles, and explaining the duties of the public sector are the advantageous side of this document, but inconsistency in the content, ignoring main sources such as Shiite jurisprudence and civil law, the interference of the fields of rights and duties, the presentation of legal issues in other sectors, lack of clarity in the duties of institutions outside the government (such as the family) comprise  the drawbacks of this transformational document. Fixing these problems seems to increase the scientific richness and the ability to support and enforce the document. It is suggested that, the jurisprudential and legal principles be classified into two separate sections, and be presented independently in the documents of philosophy of education and philosophy of formal and general education in order to amend the document (based on the third paragraph of the eighth chapter of the Transformation Document).