Egyptian school children (Photo: Reuters)
Egyptian families spend an average of 4.6 per cent of their annual income on education, a 2010/11 survey of family spending by Egypt's official statistics body CAPMAS published on Sunday shows.
Private tutoring made up a whopping 42 per cent of the average amounts households spend on education, slightly less than the 44 per cent spent on normal tuition.
According to a CAPMAS report last year, education is the fifth largest expense for Egyptian households, after food, housing, clothes and health care.
Average spending on education for a family with members at any stage of learning -- from primary school to university -- reached an annual LE3,706 ($618). Families in the cities spent three times as much as their rural counterparts.
Annual spending per student stood at LE726 ($121). This figure, however, hides the discrepancy between private and public schooling systems.
The average annual cost of private education per student stood at LE4,454 ($742), more than nine times the per student figure spent on public education per student, which stood at just LE480.
Egypt's state budget allocates LE64 billion ($11 billion) for education in 2012/13, out of which 79 per cent is spent on salaries. Education spending accounts for 12 per cent of total state spending.
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