An online campaign in Egypt is calling for a school boycott beginning on 1 November 2025, in protest at what parents, pupils and teachers describe as mounting pressures within the education system. Their complaints centre on demanding curricula, weekly assessments, expensive textbooks and private tutoring, and a school day that leaves little time for study, rest or play.
Some participants are also calling for Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif’s dismissal and for a reduction in curriculum content. Hashtags demanding the removal of the minister, an end to weekly assessments and fewer classroom and homework assignments have circulated alongside the boycott call. Supporters are urging families to keep children out of school until their demands are addressed. The online mobilisation does not, by itself, establish how many families will take part.
Malak Adham, whose children attend preparatory and general secondary school, says the current system has placed families under intense strain. Repeated assessments and daily assignments consume pupils’ time and attention, while mothers frequently study alongside their children on top of household responsibilities.
Adham has joined the boycott calls. She criticises the shrinking place of sport, music and drawing in school life and wants pupils to have time to understand their lessons, rest and pursue ordinary activities. Under the pressure, she says, families’ educational ambitions have narrowed to simply passing.
“The ministry needs to listen to parents, pupils and teachers, because they are best placed to identify the problems,” Adham tells Zawia3. “Officials make decisions without consulting the people most directly concerned. Our children are under educational pressure, and we share it with them inside our homes.”
She describes serious emotional distress among students, including her son in his final secondary-school year. In her account, his earlier schooling allowed a better balance between study, sport and tutoring. Her daughter, now in preparatory school, sometimes eats while studying to keep up with assignments and continues working until midnight.
Adham argues that an international-style curriculum has been introduced without the conditions needed to deliver it: adequately trained teachers, equipped schools and a coherent assessment system. She cites information technology taught without practical application and says pressure inside classrooms has made some children dislike school.
Ehab al-Sawwah, the father of a primary-school pupil, has similar concerns. He believes the daily workload exceeds what young children and their families can manage.
“The child goes to school early, comes home for private lessons and then completes homework, without finding time to study properly or understand,” he says. “The same exhausting routine repeats every day. It is a psychological and physical burden on the families doing it alongside their children.”
Al-Sawwah proposes monthly rather than weekly assessments and a lighter curriculum. He also wants attendance arrangements to accommodate illness, rather than leaving parents feeling compelled to send sick children to school. He argues that these changes would ease pressure without abandoning educational goals.
Meanwhile, in remarks reported by local media, the Education Ministry denied that it had issued a decision to reduce curricula from November 2025. It said any changes to curricula or study schedules would be announced through official channels.
Teachers share the burden
The dissatisfaction extends into classrooms. Dina al-Abd, a teacher at a girls’ industrial secondary school in Minya, describes severe problems in technical education: weak academic foundations, discipline and management difficulties, and inadequate financial and professional support for both pupils and staff.
She says the competency-based curriculum has added costs that do not reflect students’ circumstances. Practical work in clothing, decorative arts and computing requires repeated purchases of materials and equipment.
“These students entered technical schools because their families could not afford private lessons in general secondary education,” al-Abd says. “How can we ask them to buy new thread, fabric and tools every week? Many of my students miss school or transfer to home-study arrangements because they cannot meet the costs.”
She and her colleagues also prepare assessment booklets and electronic files for students who struggle with basic writing. She says some teachers receive blank assessment books to complete on pupils’ behalf. “We are asked to produce an error-free assessment while the student cannot write her name. How is that education?”
Al-Abd describes teacher shortages and a reluctance to assign staff to technical schools, on the grounds that basic education should take priority. General subjects are treated as less important, she says, leaving some schools without adequate mathematics, science or Arabic teaching. Cover lessons or a single teacher serving more than one school do not resolve the underlying shortage.
In her view, workshops become another financial obligation while general education is neglected, reducing the process to a formality. She says technical education is treated as a marginal sector without sufficient staffing or administrative attention.
“We spend the day on assessments and attendance records, and cannot find time for actual teaching,” al-Abd says of the requirement to assess pupils continually in classes of around 50.
She believes many teachers sympathise with the boycott calls, particularly those facing similar workloads in primary schools. But she does not see a boycott as the solution. She wants officials to visit schools themselves and design reforms around pupils’ financial circumstances and educational starting points.
That also means restoring activities and valuing teachers, she says. Schools have become dry environments with little space for recreation or personal development. In her account, physical education has sometimes been reduced to a single weekly lesson.
CAPMAS figures reported in October put pre-university enrolment in 2024/25 at approximately 28.9 million pupils: 23.734 million in general education, 2.1 million in technical education and 3.101 million in Al-Azhar education.
The figures give approximately 1.034 million teachers across those sectors: 798,400 in general education, 110,900 in technical education and 124,500 in Al-Azhar education. The reported totals by stage included 468,300 primary teachers, 252,900 preparatory teachers and 114,100 secondary teachers. These national totals do not describe the distribution of teachers between individual schools or subjects.
Parents’ anger goes beyond the curriculum
Fatma Fathi, founder of the Education Without Borders initiative, traces the current difficulties to the introduction of the new education system in 2018. She says unresolved problems have accumulated, rather than suddenly appearing at the start of this campaign.
In her assessment, former ministers Tarek Shawki and Reda Hegazy were more responsive to parents than Abdel Latif. She believes a lack of communication has intensified frustration and contributed to calls for children to stay away from school.
Fathi argues that the level and volume of curriculum content have repeatedly changed, unsettling pupils and teachers. She says the current drive to bring pupils back into classrooms has not been matched by enough progress on teacher shortages, overcrowding or the demands imposed by weekly and monthly assessments.
“Pupils return home exhausted and cannot finish their homework,” she says. “Lessons are short, classrooms are crowded, and curriculum units contain more material than children can cope with. They end up relying on their families or private tutors to explain it.”
Her own twins study under the new system, she adds, and experience the same pressure. She worries that the burden has displaced understanding and analysis with rote learning, despite the reform’s stated intentions. She also regards repeated changes in examination format as evidence of an unclear direction.
“How can we talk about Egypt’s education vision for 2030 when the curriculum changes with every minister?” she asks. For Fathi, repeated fundamental changes undermine stability. She says parents and school boards need a meaningful role in discussing policy.
Measures intended to reduce class sizes have sometimes moved children to schools farther from home, she says, adding daily transport costs. Activities have also been sacrificed to cover shortages in core subjects, depriving pupils of an outlet.
Fathi, who teaches art, describes the difficulty of explaining a lesson and assessing 45 to 50 pupils within 35 minutes. Even activity subjects can become theoretical because there is insufficient time for practice.
She also criticises higher fees and textbook prices. Some schools, she says, have required parents to pay fees in a single instalment before completing preparatory-stage examination paperwork. Families with several children in government language schools struggle to meet the combined costs.
Uniform changes add another burden. Fathi says some schools have introduced colours unavailable in ordinary shops, leaving parents dependent on purchases from the school. Taken together, she sees the boycott call as a response to the management of education, not just the difficulty of textbooks.
Fathi calls for a genuine dialogue with parents and teachers, warning that ignoring their concerns will deepen the loss of trust in schools.
Before the academic year began, Zawia3 had reported fee and textbook increases for official language schools in 2025/26. The report cited fees ranging from EGP 1,875 in kindergarten to EGP 2,950 in the third preparatory year. Textbooks ranged from approximately EGP 820–830 in kindergarten and EGP 1,030–1,230 in primary grades, reaching EGP 1,755 in the third preparatory year.
For distinguished official language schools, it reported total fees of EGP 3,477.41 in kindergarten; EGP 4,190.51 in the first three primary grades; EGP 4,490.51 in grades four to six; EGP 5,173.61 in the first two preparatory grades; and EGP 4,973.61 in the third. Reported textbook prices ranged between EGP 1,400 and EGP 1,500.
A new curriculum in schools unprepared to deliver it
Education consultant Mohamed Khalil offers a more favourable assessment of the curriculum itself. He believes it has improved by placing greater emphasis on understanding and logical analysis rather than memorisation. The difficulty, he says, lies in the transition and the volume of work.
Pupils, parents and teachers have moved from a familiar system to one requiring many daily tasks. The balance between content, homework and assessment has not been managed well, he argues. Teachers feel overloaded, while parents struggle to keep up and sometimes resort to artificial intelligence or completing assignments for their children after an exhausting day.
Khalil does not advocate eliminating assessment. He wants more varied and flexible methods, including group projects and short online quizzes through official educational platforms, such as the Egyptian Knowledge Bank and ministry services.
He proposes one meaningful weekly assignment instead of five or six daily tasks. Brief digital quizzes could help, he suggests, provided schools account for pupils in villages and areas with weak internet access.
“The new curricula are good in their content and direction, but they need better organisation and a lighter homework load,” Khalil says. “The aim is to organise, not abolish, and to balance curriculum demands with pupils’ abilities.”
He warns that sustained pressure can alienate pupils from school and lead families to seek alternatives in foreign education systems, adding further expense.
Education specialist Bothaina Abdel Raouf also distinguishes curriculum design from the conditions of implementation. She notes that complaints about assessments predate the November campaign and says the assessment system began the previous year. She suspects that the boycott campaign is organised rather than wholly spontaneous; the report does not establish who, if anyone, coordinates it.
“The real problem is not the curriculum or the principle of development,” she says. “It is the failure to take Egyptian families’ educational culture into account.” She describes a system built around interactive activities and repeated short assessments, rather than conventional memorisation, to which families have not fully adjusted.
Reform needs time for pupils, families and teachers to understand it, Abdel Raouf argues. Low teacher pay, limited resources and insufficient lesson time also impede activities that are central to the curriculum’s design.
“The content may have been developed according to international standards, but weak training and insufficient time have made implementation difficult,” she says. “The educational environment has not yet been prepared for this kind of change.”
She believes parents also need to move beyond a focus on private tutoring, memorisation and perfect marks towards children’s skills and independent learning. At the same time, she acknowledges that mistrust is reinforced by shortages, cramped schools and teachers who pressure pupils to attend private lessons.
For Abdel Raouf, improving content is necessary, but schools, teachers and families must be prepared together. Changing textbooks alone cannot transform educational practice.
A defence of continuous assessment
Hassan Shehata, professor of curricula and teaching methods at Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Education, defends the reform’s underlying approach. He says curricula should reflect learners’ capacities, interests and needs, alongside society’s future goals, modern technology and the practical applications of knowledge.
Continuous, comprehensive assessment helps teachers identify strengths and address weaknesses, he argues. Tests, classroom and extracurricular activities, and regular interaction between teachers and pupils can all contribute. He also stresses attendance and parents’ responsibility to support learning.
Shehata sees restoring the role of the school and reducing dependence on private lessons and supplementary books as central objectives. He links prolonged absence and reliance on outside tuition with weaknesses in basic literacy and other essential skills.
He urges parents to recognise the ministry’s stated ambition of producing young people able to think, analyse, question and respect others. In his view, the reforms should be judged in relation to those goals.
The boycott calls expose a gap between those ambitions and families’ daily experience. Heavy curricula, repeated assessments, disappearing activities and financial pressure converge inside homes and classrooms. Parents describe children losing the pleasure of learning; teachers describe paperwork displacing teaching; experts disagree over the curriculum while repeatedly returning to the conditions needed to make it work.
The test for reform is whether schools can offer a balanced education suited to pupils’ capacities, supported by trained teachers and families who are heard. Without that, the dispute risks further eroding confidence in the institution the reforms are meant to strengthen.
