Education
in Egypt
Egypt has the largest overall education systems in the
Middle
East and North Africa and it is growing by leaps and bounds since the early 1990s. In recent
years the Government
of Egypt has been given
greater priority in improving the educational system. With the help of the World Bank and other multilateral organizations aimed at increasing
access in early childhood care education and to the inclusion of ICT at all levels of study. Personal
management in education must also be developed and teachers should be hired based
on merit with the salaries attached to performance.
Educational system
The public education system in Egypt is
composed of three levels:
ü Basic Level
education for years 4-14: kindergarten for two years followed by
primary school for six years and primary school for
three years.
ü Levels of higher education.
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| Egyptian boys reading |
Education is compulsory for 9 academic
year aged 6 to 14. In addition, all levels of study is free of charge in any
Government who runs the schools. According to the World Bank, there is a huge difference in
educational attainment the rich and the poor, also known as "the gap of
wealth of society ".
Egypt
launched national strategic plan for the reform of pre-university education for
comprehensive, continuous approach and collective bargaining. The main elements
are access and participation, teachers, pedagogical, curriculum and learning evaluation, textbooks and learning materials, and management
and governance.
Promotional
exams will be held at all levels except grade 3, 6 and 9 in the basic education
level and grades 11 and 12 at the secondary school level, applying Standard
National exam or territory.
The
Ministry Of Education be responsible for making decisions
regarding our education system with the support of three National Centres
Centre, curriculum development, National Center for education research and the
National Center for education evaluation and examination.
There
are also formal teacher qualifications tracks for basic and secondary education
levels. Teachers must complete four years of pre-university course at the
Service of the
University to enter the Teaching
profession. The Working Group has been established to make recommendations that
are more formal. The proposal includes ideas to start with recurrent
expenditure.
Throughout
2008, the design is carried out, three selected pilot administration and
monitoring and the development of the agreed process.
During the year 2009 financing is decentralized
throughout the road to schools, and schools began to receive funding. Other
sectors in Egypt plan to decentralize decision making and expense in a phased
approach.
History of study in Egypt
Modern Education was introduced under the auspices of the Muhammad Ali
Pasha Of The Ottoman Empire in the early 1800s. He started dual education system at that
time: one serving for people who attend traditional Islamic schools (Kuttab) and another called Madrasas for elite civil servants.
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| Mansoura University, Egypt |
Demographics
Total literacy rate in
Egypt is 77 percent, 80.3% for men and 63.5% for women. There is special
attention given by the Government and NGOS in order to reduce gender inequality
in education and achieve universal primary education.
Egypt's
education system is highly centralised and divided into three stages:
ü The main stage
ü The stage setup
Phase
two low and low have been combined together under the label basic education.
His studies after this stage depends on the ability of the student.
Government schools
There are two types of Government
schools , Arab schools and the national
curriculum for Language testing in Government
Arabic . The English
government curriculum major taught and French, German, Spanish or Italian added
as a second language in secondary education. Good thing for the Egyptians it is
free.
Experimental Language Schools most of the Government curriculum, taught in English.
Social studies are taught in Arabic. Students are allowed entry into the first
grade at the age of seven, a year older than Arab schools.
Private
schools
Private schools give more
attention to students ' personal needs facilities. They are also expected to be
better than other schools because of the facilities available, but their fees
are higher between these schools use French or German as the primary language
of teaching. Many private schools have been built by missionaries and is now
affiliated with churches and provide quality education. Many private schools
offer additional education programs, along with the national curriculum
Basic education
The basic education consists of
pre-primary, primary and preparatory levels of education. In Egypt, the
Ministry of Education coordinates the preschool education. In 1999-2000 the
total enrollment rate of pre-primary students was 16 percent and that increased
to 24 percent in 2009. Irrespective of private or state run, all preschool
institutions come under Ministry of Education. It is the Ministry’s duty to
select and distribute textbooks. According to the Ministry’s guidelines, the
maximum size of a preschool should not exceed more than 45 students. Ministry
of Education is also getting support from the international agencies, such as
the World Bank to enhance the early childhood education system by increasing
access to schools, improving quality of education and building capacity of
teachers. The second tier of basic compulsory education is the preparatory
stage or lower secondary which is three years long. Completion of this tier
grants students the Basic Education Completion Certificate.
Secondary education
Secondary education consists of three tracks that is general,
vocational/technical and the dual-system vocational education known as
Mubarak-Kohl schools. The general secondary stage includes 3 years of
education, whereas the secondary vocational track could be for 3–5 years. To
enter the secondary level, the students must pass a national exam which is
given at end of the secondary stage. At this level, students have formative and
summative assessments during the first year and the average of the end of year
national standardized exams for year two and three qualifies the students to
take the Certificate of General Secondary Education-Thanawiya Amma,
which is one of the requirements for admission into the universities. Secondary
education consists of three different types: general, technical or vocational.
Al-Azhar system
Another system that runs in parallel with the public educational system
is known as the Al-Azhar system. It consists of six years of primary stage, a
three-year preparatory stage and finally three years of secondary stage. The
Ministry of education reduced the number of secondary school years from four to
three years in 1998, so as to align the Al Azhar system with the general
secondary education system. In this system as well, there are separate schools
for girls and boys. Al Azhar education system is supervised by the Supreme
Council of the Al-Azhar Institution. The Azhar Institution itself is
nominally independent from the Ministry of Education, but is ultimately under
supervision by the Egyption Prime Minister .Al Azhar schools are named
"Institutes" and include primary, preparatory, and secondary phases. All
schools in all stages teach religious subjects and non-religious subjects, to a
certain degree- not as intensively as the state schools. The bulk of the
curriculum, however, consists of religious subjects as described below. All the
students are Muslims, males and females are separated in the prep and secondary
stages. Al-Azhar schools are all over the country, especially in rural areas. The
graduates of Al-Azhar secondary schools are eligible to continue their studies
at the Al-Azhar University. As of 2007 and 2008, there are 8272 Al-Azhar
schools in Egypt. In the early 2000s, Al-Azhar schools accounted for less than
4% of the total enrollment.The graduates of this system are then automatically
accepted into Al-Azhar University. In 2007, the
Pre-University enrollment in Al- Azhar institutes is about 1,906,290 students.
Higher education system
Egypt has a very extensive higher education system. About 30% of all
Egyptians in the relevant age group go to university. However, only half of
them graduate. The Minister of Higher Education supervises the tertiary level
of education. In the current education system, there are 17 public universities,
51 public non-university institutions, 16 private universities and 89 private
higher institutions. Out of the 51 non –university institutions, 47 are
two-year middle technical institutes (MTIs) and four are 4–5 years higher
technical institutes. The actual number of students entering higher education
grew by 17 percent per year between 1992/93 and 1997/98. The higher education
cohort is projected to continue to increase by close to 6 percent (60,000
students) per annum through 2009. This means that significant efficiencies will
need to be introduced into the system just to maintain quality at its current
inadequate level. The performance and quality of higher education is currently
severely compromised by overly centralized order to improve the already
outdated system, rigid curriculum and teaching practices.The Government's
Higher Education Reform Strategy Egyptian higher education reform strategy
included 25 projects addressing all the reform domains, is implemented over
three phases until 2017, and corresponds to the government's five-year plans as
follows:
ü First phase from 2002 to 2007
ü Second phase from 2007 to 2012
ü Third phase from 2012 to 2017
Priority has been given to 12 projects in the first phase of
implementation (2002–2007) and were integrated into the following six projects:
HEEP Six Priority Projects (2002–2007)
ü Higher Education Enhancement Project Fund (HEEPF),
ü Information and Communications Technology Project (ICTP),
ü Egyptian Technical Colleges Project (ETCP),
ü Faculty of Education Project (FOEP),
ü Faculty Leaders Development Project (FLDP),
ü Quality Assurance and Accreditation Project (QAAP).
There are both private and public institutions of higher education in Egypt.
Public higher education is free in Egypt, and Egyptian students only pay
registration fees. Private education is much more expensive.
International education
As of January 2015, the International Schools Consultancy (ISC) listed
Egypt as having 184 international schools. ISC defines an 'international
school' in the following terms "ISC includes an international school if
the school delivers a curriculum to any combination of pre-school, primary or
secondary students, wholly or partly in English outside an English-speaking
country, or if a school in a country where English is one of the official
languages, offers an English-medium curriculum other than the country’s national
curriculum and is international in its orientation." This definition is
used by publications including The Economist.
Challenges
Although significant progress has been made to increase human capital
base through improved education system, still the quality of education
experience is low and unequally distributed. Due to lack of good quality
education at the basic and secondary levels, there has been a mushrooming
market for private tutoring. Now to take private tuition has become more of an
obligation than a remedial activity. According to the Egypt Human Development
Report (2005), 58 percent of surveyed families stated that their children take
private tutoring. The CAPMAS (2004) survey showed that households spend on
average around 61 percent of total education expenditure on private tutoring.
In addition, per household expenditure of the richest quintile on private
tutoring is more than seven times that of the poorest.
Egypt also has a shortage of skilled and semi-skilled workforce but
there has been an abundance of low-skilled laborers.
Even if there are any high-skilled workers available, their quality of
training is quite poor. This is mostly a problem in small-medium companies and
large public industries that work in “protected” domestic markets. The average
gross production per worker is lower than other North African countries:
Morocco and Tunisia. Youth unemployment is also very high, primarily due to
lack of education system in providing necessary training under TVET programs.
Most importantly, Egyptian education faces a main challenge because of
the quality of teachers that teach in public schools.
An ethnography study conducted by Sarah Hartmann in 2008 concluded that
most teachers in Egypt resort to teaching for lack of better options and
because the nature of the job does not conflict with their more important
gender role as mothers. The low salaries offered by the public schooling system
in Egypt attracts low-skilled employees. A study conducted in 1989 documenting
the bureaucracy of the Egyptian Ministry of Education concluded that teachers'
annual salary in Egypt is, on average, $360. Following the low quality of
teachers in Egypt, they lack basic psychological background that would allow
them to deal with students.The teacher was sent to court but the parents and
students protested for questioning him expressing that this is what they
believe to be the best way to deal with their youngsters.A study conducted by
UNESCO on educational equity in world’s 16 most populous countries placed Egypt
in the middle range in terms of equity of primary and secondary enrollments
across governorates in Egypt.
Holidays
Academic weekly holidays are on Fridays and sometimes, in addition to,
either Saturdays or Sundays.In addition to some of the state official holidays,
religious or secular, there are two main vacations:
ü Summer vacation starts from the beginning or the middle of June till the
middle of September.
ü Winter vacation starts from the middle of January till the beginning of
February
