Egypt’s education minister announced on Thursday the details about the new research paper system adopted as an alternative for final exams of Egyptian school students due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Egypt suspended classes in schools and universities from 15 March nationwide as part of measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Students from third grade through third preparatory stage will be asked to prepare one multi-discipline research paper for the whole year not for every subject, which should be submitted online between 9 April and 15 May 2020, Education Minister Tarek Shawky said in a video statement on Thursday.

Students can write the research paper unanimously or in groups of up to five students.

The minister said the new system is an “excellent evaluation” technique that measures skills not demonstrated during a two-hour written exam which mainly relies on “retrieval capacity.”

“The research paper aims to teach students new skills like teamwork, self-reliance, research, analysis, connecting topics and formulating ideas,” Shawky said.

On Sunday, the ministry will release a tutorial video on its official website to explain how to work on the research paper starting with choosing the topic itself all the way to submission.

On 9 April the ministry will announce topics of the research papers for each school year on its official website as well as in state-owned newspapers, the minister said. Students can choose between four or five topics.

Students will present their research projects online to the Ministry of Education or offline in paper to their schools, which will send them to the ministry. 

The teachers will provide guidance while the ministry will evaluate whether the papers are “accepted or unaccepted."

Egypt has so far recorded 770 cases of coronavirus, including 52 fatalities.

Earlier this month, the communication ministry said it would support online education by allowing free-of-charge surfing of all education platforms after it has increased data limits for internet packages by 20 percent.