The UK has allocated £12 million for a project of integrated educational services for needy children in Egypt, in a joint project with UNICEF that launched on Monday.

Egypt's Minister of Education Tarek Shawki, who spoke at the launch, said the project aims at contributing to education reform and improvement efforts in the country.

The ceremony was also attended by British Ambassador in Cairo Geoffrey Adams and UNICEF Representative in Egypt Bruno Maes.

Shawki said that the project serves the Ministry of Education's strategy to transform the Egyptian education system to “Education 2.0”.

Education 2.0 is a transformative education system which was announced by the Ministry of Education and Technical Education in 2017.

UNICEF is providing technical guidance on curriculum reform and related teacher training and teaching and training materials for KG1, KG2, and Grade 1 levels.

Shawki said that creating new curricula and developing teaching methods to suit the upgraded curricula are important for improving education in Egypt.

The new education system will gradually substitute the current one and by 2030 “Education 2.0” will be the only national educational system applied in Egypt, he said.

Adams said that the project is a great investment in Egyptian students, adding that it will contribute to the policies related to advancing school education in Egypt.

Maes said that Education 2.0 is very important for transforming schools in Egypt for the 21st century, adding that the UNICEF will spare no efforts to support the education ministry in improving the education system and ensuring that every child in the country has equal opportunities to access quality education.

In recent years, Egypt has been implemting a number of reforms to improve its education system at all levels.

The latest of these steps was introducing open book exams, as part of its plans to revamp the country’s education system.

Around 600,000 students from more than 2,000 public schools and 1,000 private schools sat for their final first-term exams which ran from 13 January to 24 January.

The open book system has been tried out for the first time on grade 10 students in Arabic, a second language, science, math and social studies.

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