Next week Egypt celebrates Coptic Easter and Sham Al-Nessim, or the spring festival. The Easter holidays come only a couple of weeks after the Eid holiday on 20 March. In between, students got rain vacations, amounting to five days.
On March 24 the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education issued a surprise announcement that classes would be suspended for the following two days because of extreme weather conditions, to ensure student safety and to guarantee equal conditions during exams.
While most people were concerned about the ongoing war in Iran, the ministries were occupied with something else altogether.
But as it turned out, the warning by the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (EMA) of unstable weather conditions was true. Many parts of the country, in fact, did receive heavy rain. Manar Ghanem, a member of the Egyptian Meteorological Authority, told Al-Watan that the gradual rise in temperatures coincided with various weather phenomena, leading to rainfall in winter that Egypt had not seen in two years.
But the story did not end there. The following week similar announcements were made regarding Wednesday and Thursday, 1-2 April, but only by the Ministry of Education. Some parents even thought it was a rumour and that people were circulating the statement from the week before. The difference this time around was that the decision regarding Thursday was left to the discretion of governors depending on the weather conditions in each region. Meanwhile, on 29 March, some schools in Cairo and Giza suspended classes due to bad weather conditions, but it was not a nationwide, ministry-dictated closure. However, misinformation did create public confusion, and some schools and universities sent students back home after they had arrived in the morning.
Stay at home moms and children were happy to receive a day off to sleep late. “Who doesn’t like a day off?” asked Ahmed Samir, a 10th grade student. But working mothers were not happy and had a hard time figuring out where to leave their kids. Teachers and professors, meanwhile, at both schools and universities, were disappointed.
“When did we ever miss school because of rain?” questioned Nihal Abdel-Rahman, head of the Mass Communications Department at a private university. Such a decision for a governorate like Alexandria is understandable, she said, but there was no need for collectivity and last-minute decision-making.
Abdel-Rahman said she understood that the government was worried about a repeat of what happened in October 2019 when flash flooding stranded school buses on the Ring Road for hours, but she added that this happened only once and it had been unexpected. Even if it applies to school students, it should not have included university students, she stressed.
She worries that the younger generation is being raised to think that they could stay home whenever anything goes wrong, even the weather. Moreover, Abdel-Rahman added, such a decision reflects that education is not considered a priority.
On a similar note, secondary school teacher Amira Abdallah said the days off were a waste of time, especially since this is a season for national vacation days. Between Ramadan when school days are shorter and fasting students were not concentrating, and Eid and the Easter vacations, there is hardly any time left in the semester to finish the curriculum, she said.
Abdallah fully supported the need to close schools when the weather is bad to guarantee the safety of the students, especially with the risk of shock from street lights during rain or the falling of trees and billboards in strong wind. “It is better to err on the side of caution,” she said, noting that some school buildings may lack the structural resistance to withstand such weather, potentially leading to accidents. However, she wondered how and when teachers can finish the curriculum and urged that the ministry cancel parts of it.
School principal Maha Yehia agreed. She said because of the vacation, students are taking their March exams in April. Meanwhile, the April exams will take place in May, which hardly leaves any time before the term’s final exams. “Why should some rain bring everything to a standstill?” Yehia asked, noting that in Alexandria it rains most of the year and yet schools operate normally.
Samir, the 10th grade student, is anxious that following the holidays, exams will pile up and they will not have any breathing space. “We enjoyed the break, but now it will catch up with us.”
* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 April, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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