The House of Representatives recently passed a law amending some provisions of Education Law 139/1981 which allows for the establishment of one- to two-year vocational schools. The schools are intended to prepare professionals across various sectors such as industry, agriculture, hospitality, and business technology.
The amendments aim to improve already existing vocational secondary education. This will help develop a pool of highly trained technical professionals. Additionally, the amendments aimed to overhaul the structure and content of technical education, with particular focus on strengthening active partnership with industrial and business sectors. The goal is to ensure that graduates have the skills and experience required by employers to facilitate more effective training and employment opportunities.
According to Ayman Bahaaeddin, deputy minister of education and technical education for technical affairs, there are 3,000 technical schools in Egypt, and the ministry is increasing them annually by 50-100 applied technology schools. Though Egypt currently offers vocational education that lasts from three to five years, it lacks technicians from level-two schools. These belong to service industries such as hairdressing, beauty, fashion designing, garment manufacturing and tailoring, explained Bahaaeddin. These professions require more manual skills than theoretical study, which is why such programmes could be implemented in one- to two-year schools, he said.
The recently passed law, according to Minister of Education and Technical Education Mohamed Abdel-Latif, aligns with the government’s commitment to modernising the pre-university education system, to produce well-qualified graduates equipped with both academic knowledge and practical skills. The reforms emphasise greater attention to technological education to keep pace with future demands and support the growth of various economic and service sectors.
Bahaaeddin noted that the ministry is targeting 800,000 students who finished their elementary education. “Each year 45 per cent of grade nine students [elementary education] join general secondary schools while 55 per cent join vocational schools. We are targeting 40 per cent for general secondary and 60 per cent for vocational education,” added Bahaaeddin.
Now, vocational education schools, according to Bahaaeddin, are called applied technology schools. Students who want to join them are required to pass an admissions exam in the selected field of study. Some schools, including the Dabaa nuclear schools and those established in cooperation with Telecom Egypt, require high grades, even higher than those required for general secondary schools, he stated.
The ministry, Bahaaeddin said, intends within the next three years to connect all applied technology schools to a partner from the market, whether from the private or public sector. “Accordingly, students will easily find job opportunities as the partners would prefer appointing these students whom they trained in their workshops and factories,” he confirmed, adding that there are at least 20 technology universities who only accept students who graduated from applied technology schools and who have “very rare numbers” of general secondary students.
“The amendments also aimed to strengthen partnerships with production and business sectors by aligning educational pathways with the evolving needs of local and global labour markets,” said the minister.
To make these programmes effective, Egypt is actively cooperating with international development partners. The European Union (EU) and the European Training Foundation (ETF) have backed the reforms with substantial funding, including the 45 million euro Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Egyptian initiative which supports curriculum development, teacher training, and quality assurance. Germany’s Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) has also contributed by supporting reforms in transparency, digitalisation and the promotion of gender inclusion within vocational education.
Bahaaeddin pointed out that the minister of education and technical education has already signed a memorandum of cooperation with Italy to set up five vocational schools in energy, cosmetics, bio-chemistry, and the drug industry. This is in addition to further memorandums with Germany and Japan in the car industry and The Netherlands and Canada in agriculture, especially post-harvesting.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 August, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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