For nearly a year, Amani Mahmoud waited for a kindergarten place for her son in one of Egypt’s state-run language schools, commonly known as experimental schools. She applied online in June 2024 from the family’s home in October Gardens, Giza.
Her son’s age on the October admission reference date was five years and 18 days. Waiting another year risked taking him beyond the six-year age limit. Yet, as one of the younger applicants, he remained in the sixth and final placement round.
When his allocation finally appeared, it was to Kafr Halawa Primary School in Atfih, an Arabic-medium government school around 92 kilometres from home. Amani estimates that reaching it by car takes more than two hours.
On visiting, she says she was told to pay first-year kindergarten fees even though her son had not attended that year, sign a declaration not to transfer him before the end of primary school and complete registration within 15 days or lose the place.
She wonders whether families are effectively being pushed towards private education when the alternative involves such long, costly journeys—particularly when regular attendance is mandatory.
Mohamed Zaki, also from October Gardens, describes a similar experience. After an 11-month wait, his younger daughter was allocated to an Atfih school while her older sister attended Al Salam School near home.
He fears the allocation would require him to accompany the child on a four-hour round trip, five days a week, over the coming school years. He has submitted a complaint to the Cabinet’s complaints system, he tells Zawia3.
Film director Ahmed Fadl, who lives in Faisal, says his older son already attends a local experimental school. The younger child waited from June 2024 for admission, only to be assigned to a school in Atfih on the Cairo–Assiut desert road, around 106 kilometres from the family home.
When Fadl went to complete admission procedures, he says officials asked him to sign a declaration accepting the school and promising not to seek a transfer during kindergarten and the early primary years. He refused and complained to Education Ministry officials, requesting that the two brothers attend the same nearby school.
A recurring shortage of nearby places
Amani El Sherif, founder of a parents’ group for experimental schools, says the kindergarten admissions crisis recurs every year. After months of waiting, families discover there are too few places in their own education districts, despite successive changes in ministers and local officials.
In a Facebook post, she identifies Cairo and Giza as examples of the problem. Parents in the final allocation rounds accept schools in distant districts because refusing may cost their children a place in the language-school system altogether.
She says Ministerial Decision 285 permits applications from age four until the day before a child turns six. In heavily populated districts, however, competition means successful applicants are generally older than five. Families whose children are still too young for priority can reach the final round without a local seat.
El Sherif links the shortage to limited classroom capacity and new instructions reducing class sizes. She says placements that once involved October and Sheikh Zayed now extend to Atfih, Al Saff and Hawamdiya, even for families living in Haram, Bulaq or Omraniya.
Parents face a choice between a distant language-school place and a nearby Arabic-medium or private school. The first may be physically exhausting; the second may mean abandoning their preferred education or paying fees they cannot afford.
Some accept distant placements in the hope of moving later. El Sherif says no-transfer declarations have appeared in admission files for years, but that transfers can still be considered when a place becomes available. She calls for allocations to reflect where children actually live.
Protests and a collective complaint
Dozens of parents gathered outside Giza’s Education Directorate on Sunday to protest the placements. A collective complaint from 747 parents asked the governor to restore the principle of allocating children close to home.
Zawia3 obtained a memorandum prepared for the governor concerning the complaint. It concluded that placing the affected children in nearby official language schools was not possible under existing capacity, proposing Arabic-medium government schools or a wait for new language schools instead.
Parents who had applied to Baraem Misr and Imam Mohamed Abdu official language schools in October Gardens but were assigned to Atfih also appealed to President Abdel Fattah El Sisi.
Lawyer Rasha Mohamed, herself an affected parent, argues that the problem involves poor distribution as well as insufficient capacity. She says children from Haram, Bulaq and Faisal were moved into October schools while children from October Gardens were sent to Arabic-medium schools in Atfih.
Some parents were told the no-transfer declaration was merely a formality, she says. Others faced a five-day registration deadline, justified by the approaching financial year-end, rather than the longer period reported elsewhere. Families who refused to sign took their objections to the directorate.
“The decision will place a heavy burden on children who are only five years old and a few months, and impose additional transport costs on us,” she tells Zawia3. She also questions how families can meet attendance requirements when the school is so far away.
Rasha says that although October’s education administration includes eight sectors, the online application presented her with only two schools. She later learned that children from Haram had been accepted at a school near her home. In her view, opening a newly built school in the West Airport area could help relieve overcrowding.
The directorate’s response: not enough classrooms
Saeed Attia, head of Giza’s Education Directorate, tells Zawia3 that age determines admission priority to fee-paying official language schools. Children closest to six are placed first, followed by progressively younger applicants.
He says the directorate placed 10,000 children in 85 schools within their residential areas, while another 8,000 remained without places. When parents asked for admission in any district to avoid losing the school year, he says, the directorate used vacant seats in areas such as Al Saff and Atfih.
Increasing class sizes in already full local schools would damage learning, he argues. The ministry is building additional schools in districts including Haram, Bulaq and October, but those projects do not resolve every immediate placement problem.
Attia rejects evening shifts as an easy solution for language schools. Their curriculum requires a longer school day than Arabic-medium schools, he says, so a second shift would leave children returning home too late.
He suggests that parents seek an online change of preference to a distinguished official language school near home, where available, or apply to a local Arabic-medium government school when registration opens in June. He stresses that compulsory attendance rules prevent families from simply keeping children away from distant schools.
Attia acknowledges that parents were required to sign no-transfer declarations covering kindergarten and primary school. He calls them a precaution against immediate transfer demands, while also saying they do not block applications through the electronic transfer system.
He explains that nearby schools have too few vacancies: of the 8,000 children in the final round, no more than about 500 could currently be moved. Others would have to wait for new capacity.
Education Ministry spokesperson Shady Zalta said in a 26 May television interview that the relevant Giza network comprised 98 schools: 85 official language schools and 13 distinguished official language schools. Admissions follow age order and available capacity, he said, with a policy of limiting classes to around 50 pupils.
Previous construction programmes have added capacity. Egypt’s Projects Map records eight Giza schools opened for 2019/20 at a combined cost of EGP 48.88 million. Ahead of 2023/24, reported projects included 11 new schools costing EGP 222.6 million with 367 classrooms, and expansions at nine schools costing EGP 65 million with 207 classrooms. Yet the present complaints indicate continuing gaps between demand and available local places.
What does the right to education require?
Education researcher Kamal Moghith regards compulsory distant placements as inconsistent with children’s constitutional rights. He argues that families should be able to choose an educational route compatible with their circumstances and location and should challenge the decision.
A challenge to an administrative placement decision belongs before the competent administrative court. Constitutional questions reach the Supreme Constitutional Court through the prescribed referral or serious-plea procedures; parents cannot simply bring a direct original action there to cancel an individual placement.
Moghith also raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest arising from Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif’s background in private education. He argues that clear safeguards are necessary to prevent families from perceiving public-school policies as pressure to move into private schools.
On funding, Article 19 sets a minimum education allocation of 4% of gross national product, not gross domestic product. Moghith contrasts an estimated EGP 800 billion requirement with around EGP 230 billion in spending, but such a comparison requires a consistent fiscal year and spending definition. The figures alone cannot establish the size of a constitutional shortfall without that clarification.
He believes more investment would allow the ministry to build schools and address a teacher shortage he estimates at around 600,000.
Human rights lawyer Malek Adly, director of the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights, says the state’s obligation is to provide education compatible with children’s physical needs and families’ circumstances. He calls for investment in schools and hospitals alongside the government’s emphasis on roads and bridges.
“It is not reasonable for a five-year-old to have to travel around 100 kilometres to reach kindergarten,” Adly tells Zawia3.
He recommends that affected parents seek redress through prosecutors and the State Council, arguing that the placements endanger children’s rights.
Article 19 recognises education as a right, requires quality standards and makes schooling compulsory through the secondary stage or its equivalent. It also guarantees free education at its various stages in state institutions in accordance with the law.
Parliamentary intervention and proposed alternatives
Nashwa El Deeb, MP for Imbaba, says she contacted the Giza governor and education officials in an effort to resolve the dispute. She tells Zawia3 that they agreed to extend registration and stop forcing parents to sign no-transfer declarations, with action expected by Thursday, 29 May.
She also planned a meeting that day with the governor, the head of the Educational Buildings Authority and education officials to examine alternatives to long journeys.
Her proposals include designating newly completed schools as official language schools and transferring final-round applicants according to their home areas. She also suggests creating language-school annexes within under-enrolled Arabic-medium schools, or combining two low-enrolment schools and converting the freed building.
These remained proposals and commitments at the time of reporting. Parents were still caught between exhausting journeys, extra transport costs and the prospect of losing an affordable form of education they had chosen for their children. Their demand is for a practical response grounded in where families live and what young children can reasonably endure.
