The governor of Kirkuk directed a request to transfer the staff of 5,000 employees and teachers in the Kurdish Education Department affiliated with the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG to the Iraqi Ministry of Education, at a time when the Iraqi parliament had voted in 2023 to reject this request.
The letter signed by the governor of Kirkuk, Rebwar Taha, issued on February 27, 2025, is addressed to the Iraqi Minister of Education, and it emphasized attaching the signatures of 5,000 employees and teachers from the Kurdish education staff in Kirkuk Education, requesting the transfer of their staff to the Iraqi government and the settlement of their salaries in the branches of Rafidain and Rashid banks in the province.
The governor's request comes as the Iraqi parliament rejected on June 12, 2023, the transfer of salaries of Kurdish education teachers and employees in the disputed territories to the Iraqi Ministry of Education, as part of the vote to approve the general budget for the years (2023, 2024 and 2025).
Last October, the Iraqi Supreme Court has rejected the transfer of Kurdish Education teachers and employees of Kirkuk from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to the Federal Ministry of Education.
The Iraqi parliament member for Kirkuk province, Najwa Hamid al-Kakai, told (KirkukNow) at the time that "the parliament rejected by a majority of votes the transfer of salaries of Kurdish education in the disputed territories to Baghdad, which was included in the paragraphs of the draft law," adding that "rejecting this paragraph of the draft law means that this issue will not be discussed in parliament until 2026 because the budget that was approved is for three years."
She pointed out that "the Kurdish blocs supported this step. The issue has been discussed at the level of the Ministry of Education of the regional government and the federal Ministry of Education for months, but unfortunately it was rejected by parliament due to the opposition of the Arab blocs."
The tension between Baghdad and Erbil in 2017 had a negative impact on the Kurdish education process in Kirkuk, as the KRG was incapable of providing regular funding, leading to tutors boycotting and protesting several times.
The Kurdish education unit in Kirkuk, funded by the KRG, has 7,751 teachers and employees who teach the Kurdish curriculum to 100,000 pupils in 500 public schools. The main language for education in Iraq is Arabic, while in the three provinces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
The KRG has opened special directorates for Kurdish education in the disputed territories of Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala, which, like its Kurdish counterparts, suffer from a lack of budget for accurate monthly payroll and a shortage of buildings, staff, curriculums, and utilities.
Kirkuk, an oil-rich city with Iraq's second-largest oil reserves, is ethnically a mixed province with 1.7 million Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, and Turkmen. It has long been at the center of disputes between Baghdad and Erbil.
The file was part of the ministerial curriculum of the government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, as part of the demands of the KRG.
In 2014, Kirkuk teachers and employees took the case to the Federal Court and filed lawsuits against the Iraqi Prime Minister and the Speaker of Parliament in protest against the refusal to transfer their staff to the federal government, but the court decided on October 15 to reject the request and stressed that the case "is not within the jurisdiction of the court."
According to statistics from the KRG Ministry of Education, there are 14,000 teachers and employees on the staff of the ministry who serve in schools in the provinces of Kirkuk, Nineveh, Diyala and Salahadin.
The ministerial curriculum of the current Iraqi government headed by Mohammed Shia al-Sudani includes (paragraph 21 - page 25) about "linking all Kurdish education schools located outside the Kurdistan Region to the General Directorate of Kurdish Education in the Federal Ministry of Education and transferring their staff to this department."
Sherzad Rashid, director of Kurdish studies in Kirkuk province, said in a previous statement to (Kirkuk Now), "The file was part of the ministerial program of the government of Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, within the framework of the demands of the Kurdistan Regional Government to form the government, but the issue was then linked to the approval of the budget, and it was required to be voted on in the budget law, but it did not receive a sufficient number of votes."
The KRG has failed to secure the salaries of its employees and imposed a system of savings, deductions and delaying the disbursement of salaries, as a result of which 15 salaries were not distributed during the past ten years.
Iraq’s education infrastructure is in ruins in many parts of the country; one in every two schools is damaged and needs rehabilitation, says a report by the United Nations Children's Fund UNICEF about education in Iraq.
Many schools operate in multiple shifts due to inadequate buildings and staff in an attempt to accommodate as many students as possible, squeezing the little learning time that children have.
