Iranian student-protests and rallies have spread to half a dozen major cities in Iran. The students, who are mainly high school third graders, protest the unprecedented difficult final exams.

Local and state-run news media reported on Monday, May 30th that high-school third-graders from the cities of Yazd, Southern Khorasan, Kerman, Gorgan, Shahroud, Ilam, Shiraz and Isfahan staged protest gatherings in front of the local offices of the ministry of Education and burnt their books in a show of protest against difficult final examinations.

Another state news agency, ILNA, published an article titled “chain rallies” acknowledging the continuous protest by high-school students. It wrote: “one week has passed and the student demonstrations still continuous. They are protesting the unprecedented hard exams.”

ILNA added that the protest first started in Tehran province and quickly spread to other major cities including Isfahan, Mashhad, Ilam, Gorgan, Fars and a number of other provinces.

Iranian students have also been posting their protests creating hashtags emphasizing on the issue nationwide. The reason why the high-school third graders are protesting is that the final grades of high-school 3rd grades are important to their future admission exam to enter universities.

One of Tehran’s teachers admitted the difficulties the students say about the exams. He told ILNA that the questions were not designed for this level of class. For example if a student missed one out of a three-part-question, he would lose the entire grad. She said the average grading this year is about 10 to 15% less compare to last year.