It was during a chemistry exam this year that a high-school student suddenly left his desk, opened a nearby window, and threw himself to the ground outside in one of the schools hosting the Thanaweya Amma exams in the city of Al-Santa in Gharbiya governorate.

The student died of his injuries, and there has been no explanation for his actions. Some said he had felt desperate because he had found the exam too difficult, while official reports say that he threw himself out of the window after he was spotted cheating in the exam.

Whatever the cause, what matters is that his tragic case was not the only incident related in the Thanaweya Amma exams. It was not the first time that cheating has been reported during the exams either. Reports of exam papers being leaked on social media allowing cheating to take place have been circulating, and the press has been having a field day reporting on the arrests of people allegedly involved in leaking exams or allowing cheating in exams.

Similar stories seem to take place every year, as do lower grades.

Although Egypt’s 2013 constitution pays great attention to education, allocating seven articles to the education system, the incidents that we have witnessed this year have made many wonder if these articles are being implemented on the ground.

This academic year was heralded by a number of incidents that opened a Pandora’s Box of questions about the application of the terms of the constitution. On the first day of the last academic year, a staircase in a government school in Giza collapsed, for example, claiming the lives of a number of female students and injuring others. In another tragic incident, a second-grade student in a private school in the Agouza district of Cairo fell from the third floor, allegedly to escape punishment from her teacher.

As is the case almost every year, we also hear reports of students committing suicide as a result of having failed exams or for getting grades that do not qualify them for the college they desire.

There is almost a consensus among experts that the education system in Egypt has been in urgent need of adjustment for decades. Egypt ranked 137th in the Basic Education Quality Index in the Global Competitiveness Index for 2012-13 out of 144 countries and declined to 148th place in 2013-14.

However, a government report said that “Egypt jumped 11 places in the pre-university education sector as part of the Global Knowledge Index.”

“It was ranked 72nd in the 2021 report, compared to 83rd position the previous year,” the report said, adding that “Egypt also advanced three positions in the education ranking issued by US News, in which it came 39th in the 2021 report, compared to 42nd in the 2020 report.”

Figures aside, the consensus remains that there is still a long way to go for Egypt’s education system to comply with international standards. However, this is only to speak of the national system where the majority of Egypt’s school-aged children are enrolled.

 

TUG OF WAR: Egypt’s education school system is split into the national and the international sectors.

The national system includes public, state-affiliated experimental schools, and private schools. There are also vocational schools and schools affiliated to Al-Azhar. Each type of school has its own pros and cons, but public schools remain the most underprivileged.

Once the academic year starts, almost the same argument erupts between parents and the Ministry of Education every year. Whereas parents insist that many school books are redundant and overloaded with information, ministry officials remain adamant in the face of public criticism, arguing that experts know best when it comes to designing curricula and that parents have no right to interfere.

The past two years have seen arguments regarding the new fourth-grade curricula, with parents up in arms over what they see as a “university-level” curriculum taught to young fourth-graders in schools.

There were calls to annul the changes and revert to the old books, but they seemed to fall on deaf ears. A briefing was submitted to the prime minister and the minister of education demanding a change of the curricula for grade four, but that seemed to make a little headway the year afterwards when some parts of the curricula were removed.

Then another tug of war erupted over the use of tablets in secondary schools, which raised equal public anxiety due to insufficient Internet coverage. Parents were quick to criticise the system. One main bone of contention was the fact that they would have to pay insurance premiums for the tablets and a fine could be imposed for damaging or losing them.

In the meantime, parents wondered why tablets were being used in the first place since they did not address many of the problems of the system, including the use of private lessons.  

Officials insisted that the new system included new ideas like open-book exams and that the exam questions were designed in a way that promotes critical thinking rather than memorisation. Quarterly exams would be held so that students’ final grades would be cumulative in each subject.

Meanwhile, the ministry has also provided online facilities, such as a knowledge bank and online classes, so that students do not have to rely so much on private lessons. The facilities were well-received by many, but some believe that such developments have not been allowed to proceed at the desired pace due to public pressure and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

One parent of two sons, one in the primary stage and the other in a preparatory school, was not impressed by the new system. He told Al-Ahram Weekly that “teachers in public schools are always absent” and that “children go to school for a few days just to attend monthly exams.”

“Otherwise, they stay at home and rely on private lessons which cost a fortune,” the parent, who asked to have his name withheld, complained.

Another parent of two children in the preparatory and secondary stages was not satisfied either. She complained that education centres where students get private lessons “are draining parents” and that in her case “such lessons consume almost half my husband’s salary.”

“Science alone is split into three, chemistry, physics and biology, and each subject is taught by a different teacher and is paid for separately,” she told the Weekly. “It’s financially ruinous.”

A parent of another secondary school student who happened to be among the first generation on which the tablets were tried, related an equally disappointing experience. She said that her daughter had at first been excited by the tablets, but was then shocked when she saw she had scored very low marks, partly due to the fact that students “were not well-prepared or trained on the new system.”

 

EFFORTS AND CHALLENGES: An inadequate budget is one of the major challenges impeding the development of Egypt’s education system.

Billions of pounds are needed to improve its quality, or at least that is what former minister of education Tarek Shawki told the press recently, insisting that “the cost of new buildings alone to absorb population growth amounts to LE130 billion.”

Experts say that to upgrade education in Egypt more schools need to be established every year to absorb the constant increase in the birth rate. It is estimated that about 2.5 million children are born every year, which lays a huge burden on educational development.

According to a 2018-19 report by the Ministry of Education, the government cannot afford to build more than 35 per cent of its target number of new school classes. Taking into account the annual birth rate, around 25 million more students will enroll in schools over the coming 10 years, which means that there will need to be at least 100,000 more schools by 2030 to accommodate the increase.

That is a great challenge, and it may very well hinder current attempts to develop the curricula, teaching techniques, the quality of education, and the digital transformation. Multiple sources of funding should be envisioned to upgrade education in a way that will also meet market needs and competitiveness.

Egypt’s Vision 2030 for quality education has three main goals: improving the quality of the education system in line with international standards; making education available to all without discrimination; and improving competitiveness and the outputs of the education system.

The development process includes developing curricula, providing the infrastructure needed for such development, upgrading the evaluation system, and focusing on more comprehensive assessments.

The vision identifies a number of basic challenges facing basic education in particular. Among the most important is an insufficient number of teachers compared to the number of students and a lack of transparency regarding the distribution of instructors among schools. In addition, there is an obvious lack of trust between the community and those at the helm of the education system, not to mention the digital illiteracy of most teachers, insufficient training for teachers, and low incentives for educationalists.

There is also an urgent need to revise and update educational curricula and find solutions to the incompetence of some teachers. There needs to be a radical change in graduating and preparing teachers, and attention should be paid to the deterioration of the infrastructure of most public schools.

Egypt’s education development programme began in earnest in 2018-19. Its target is to find solutions for many of these accumulated problems, such as lowering the number of students in crammed classes, overhauling deteriorating buildings, and appointing better-qualified teachers.

The new vision aims at changing old norms of studying from an exam-oriented system to a broader vision that focuses on promoting skills and character-building instead. The new vision also attempts to move from the focus on rote techniques and to adopt a new approach that promotes critical thinking and creativity.

The use of technology and the introduction of tablets into the high-school system have been ways to reach these goals. Upgrading school infrastructure, providing technical and vocational training for teachers, changing primary stage curricula, and promoting the integration of people with minor disabilities into schools are all small steps taken on the way to achieving comprehensive development.

Egypt’s educational system was changed by almost 50 per cent by 2021, according to official figures, as a result.

A report by the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development says that the state targeted increasing the budget of the education sector to about LE214.8 billion during 2022/2023 and reducing the sizes of classes by establishing more schools. It has replaced or renovated 25,000 classrooms in all educational stages to accommodate the growth in the number of students.

The state has also adopted a plan to reduce school dropout rates by increasing the number of community schools. These are state-affiliated classes established in remote and underprivileged areas for girls and children aged between six and 14 who are not enrolled in basic education or who have dropped out of school.

Girl-friendly schools have been established in cooperation with the National Council for Motherhood and Childhood with the aim of helping girls complete their education. The number reached 4,995 in 2019-20. About 133,000 students are reportedly enrolled in community schools, and 68.2 per cent of these are females.

 

UN ROLE: The UN has also been giving a hand in promoting education as part of meeting broader goals for sustainable development in Egypt.

“Education is the main pillar of our goals in the field of sustainable development until 2030. If we fail in the field of education, the development structure will fail with it. We must work together to develop a new approach to the future of education,” said UN education and culture agency UNESCO head Audrey Azoulay on the fourth celebration of World Education Day on 24 January.

Among the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved by the UN in September 2015 were investing in people, giving priority to learning, providing quality and inclusive education, and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

According to a UN report, there are some 771 million illiterate people who do not have opportunities to study or complete their studies in the world, 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read or perform basic arithmetic, and nearly four million children in refugee camps who are not enrolled in schools.

It said that without providing comprehensive and equal educational opportunities for quality education for all, gender equality cannot be achieved and countries will not be able to break the cycle of poverty that negatively affects the lives of millions of children, youth and adults.

UNESCO also estimates that about 250 million children remain unable to read, write, or do arithmetic even after spending at least four years in school.

A joint report by the UN children’s agency UNICEF and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics warns that there are at least 12 million children in the Middle East who are deprived of education due to poverty, violence, or sexual discrimination.

 Despite the availability of the political will to expand the umbrella of education in the Middle East over the past decade, there has been little progress, the report said. It classifies children who are deprived of education according to different educational stages: 1.5 million are in the preschool stage; 3.4 million of primary school age; and 9.2 million at the preparatory age. This means that about 15 per cent of children in the Middle East are deprived of education, mostly due to poverty, the report said.

Looking at other countries’ experiences may be helpful, especially those which have been taking serious steps towards upgrading their education systems like Finland, China, and India.

Over the past two decades, India’s commitment to improving education has reflected on the economic and social aspects of the country. Developing education is a gateway towards achieving other development targets such as beating extreme poverty and illiteracy, solving problems of migration from rural to urban areas, religious intolerance, social discrimination and the spread of superstition, as well as upgrading poor public services and curbing overpopulation.

Improving education has been a prime target that both the government and civil society have worked hard to achieve. Thanks in part to India’s democratic system, the country ranks second in Asia in terms of development with a national product exceeding $4.5 trillion.

In Finland, one of the main points of strength of the education system is its ability to guarantee equal opportunities for all regardless of social and economic background. Instead of competition and comparisons, schools in Finland generally focus on supporting and guiding students on an individual level.

The school day in Finland is shorter than in any other member state of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), but it is used effectively. Teachers are highly trained, and teaching at all educational levels requires a teacher to obtain a Master’s degree, in addition to extensive studies of education and special subjects. The profession of a teacher is also highly valued.

The concept of lifelong education has been one of the main pillars of sustainable development worldwide. Encouraging life-long learning is also not a new concept, as the idea was advocated by ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato.

A modern curriculum for lifelong learning includes multiple areas such as reading, arithmetic, digital literacy, science literacy, media literacy, history, environmental knowledge, culture, and knowledge related to the field of work aimed at by an individual.

A case in point can be seen in China, where community education has been adopted as a substitute for those who have dropped out of formal education. China has excelled in adopting policies and mechanisms to meet the needs of educationally disadvantaged groups, and it has developed successful projects for community education.

In Egypt, some steps have been taken in this vein. In October 2022, a project for lifelong education was started under the auspices of the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, with the UNESCO Regional Office in Cairo and the Ministry of Local Development launching the project which was inaugurated by Minister of Local Development Hisham Amna and Aswan Governor Ashraf Attia during the Aswan Conference for Learning Cities held in Aswan in Upper Egypt with the aim of promoting lifelong learning.

The conference aimed to spread a culture of learning and disseminating the model of lifelong learning in all the Egyptian governorates. It also gains experience from the UNESCO Learning Cities Network and introduces the idea of learning cities into Egypt.

It has yielded some positive results. Aswan won an UNESCO award as the best Egyptian city to join the UNESCO Learning Cities Network, ranking among the 10 best cities for learning for 2019.

Attia praised the efforts of the Ministry of Local Development and UNESCO, which has now introduced Aswan, Giza, Fayoum, and Damietta into the Learning Cities Network.

“We aspire to enhance quality and excellence in the field of education and learning while expanding the use of modern learning technology and stimulating learning within local communities,” he told the Aswan conference. “This requires a strong will and the serious participation of all segments of society.”

In the meantime, Egypt has a long way to go before it can compete internationally in the field of education.

The writer is a senior researcher at the Centre for Coptic Studies in Cairo.

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* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 August, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly