Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly chaired a meeting on Monday to discuss strategies for the upcoming academic year in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

Minister of Education Tarek Shawqy, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research Khaled Abdel-Ghaffar and Minister of Communication and Information Technology Amr Talaat attended the meeting.

In a statement after the meeting, Madbouly said the state has directed giving greater attention to e-learning and the crisis of the coronavirus has proved that it is on the right track, asserting that President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi has ordered an expansion in the remote learning system.

Shawqy said the ministry has made vast investments in e-learning and its infrastructure, adding that there is a notable increase in people's acceptance of e-learning.

He also reviewed the tools and means the ministry provided to deal with the repercussions of the coronavirus crisis as the academic year was halted in the middle of March. He also proposed the ministry's plan for the new academic year 2020/2021.

The minister noted that curricula for all academic stages have been uploaded through the ministry's platform https://study.ekb.eg/, the digital library and the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, adding that 13.5 million students across the nation have already been admitted to digital classes, in addition to a million parents.

Abdel-Ghaffar proposed a plan for higher education, including a merge between traditional education and e-learning systems to reduce the density in classes. He said students will be assessed through three phases of knowledge, assessment as well as activities and services.

At the end of the meeting, the premier ordered an expansion in the internet capacity to include more educational content for all academic stages and the database needed for the increasing demand.