Some students pursuing British qualifications are sitting exams this year in the “national identity subjects”, Arabic and history, that will count for 20% of their final overall score for the first time, after Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif said at the Egypt Forum 2026 that “this matter is settled”.
Ministerial Decree No. 148 of 2024 allocates 10% of the total score to each of Arabic and history in international qualifications equivalent to Egypt’s general secondary certificate. The ministry says these subjects foster students’ loyalty and sense of belonging, and that it gave schools a four-year grace period. Parents, however, reject the idea that their children should pay, in a single year, for a situation that lasted decades, when these were pass-or-fail subjects that did not count towards the overall score. The decision also affects competition for the 5% of places at public universities reserved for holders of equivalent qualifications, and has sparked a dispute over examination fees that has reached parliament.
Article 24 of the Constitution states that “the Arabic language, religious education and national history in all its stages are core subjects in public and private pre-university education”, without specifying whether they count towards the overall score. These subjects were already taught in international schools, but remained pass-or-fail subjects excluded from the total, a situation the minister said dated back around 30 years and which the adoption of the 2014 Constitution did not change. The ministry says this led to the neglect of these subjects, to the point where, according to its officials, students in some international schools cannot read even the simplest Arabic texts and know nothing about Egyptian history.
On 29 August 2024, the ministry issued Decree No. 148 regulating study, examinations and assessment in all schools awarding international, foreign or special qualifications within Egypt. It was subsequently published in the Official Gazette, Issue 105 (supplement), on 12 May 2025. Article 1 requires these schools to teach Arabic in kindergarten, Arabic and religious education from Grades 1 to 3, and Arabic, social studies and religious education from Grades 4 to 9, following the curricula used in Egyptian public schools. Article 2 allocates 10% of the overall score to each of Arabic and social studies at the end of every grade up to Grade 9, the third year of preparatory school. Articles 4, 5 and 6 then allocate the same share to each of Arabic and history in the overall score for qualifications equivalent to the general secondary certificate, such as British and American qualifications, starting with students enrolled in Grade 10, the first year of secondary school, in the 2025/2026 academic year. The decree covers Egyptian students obtaining equivalent foreign qualifications inside or outside Egypt. Article 4 stipulates that marks in the two subjects must be obtained “through a general examination organised by the Ministry of Education and Technical Education”, according to the decree. Religious education, meanwhile, is taught outside the overall score but requires a 70% pass mark, according to the ministry’s announcement. Ministry spokesperson Shadi Zalta said this requirement had been in force since last year and was adopted as part of amendments to the Education Law in May 2025.
The implementation date varies by system. Students pursuing British qualifications who chose to shorten their studies by a year and obtain their qualification after Grade 11, the second year of secondary school, will sit the two exams as part of their final overall score in the current 2026/2027 academic year because it is their final year, according to the minister. American Diploma students will also sit the exams this year. Under the decree, their overall score is divided into 40% for their cumulative grade-point average, 40% for final international examinations and 20% for the Arabic and history exams. For qualifications completed in Grade 12, the third year of secondary school, the two subjects will begin counting towards the total in 2027/2028, following a four-year grace period from the decree’s issuance.
On 10 September, the minister presented six decisions he described as “the most prominent decisions issued to regulate the educational system in international schools in the new academic year”. The first requires these schools to teach national identity subjects, with Arabic and social studies each accounting for 10% of the overall score in basic education, and Arabic and history each accounting for 10% of the overall score in every secondary-school grade. The decisions also included a ban, starting in 2026/2027, on transfers from public and private schools into the third year of secondary school at international schools, limiting transfers to applicants for the first secondary year; the formation of committees to check international schools’ student numbers against their licences; and the cancellation of celebrations of holidays and occasions the ministry said were “incompatible with Egyptian culture”. A week later, on 17 September, ministry spokesperson Shadi Zalta said the decree had been issued on 30 August 2024 and was not new. The ministry had “allowed a grace period, so it is not a sudden decision”, he said, giving schools four years to prepare gradually. He asked whether the parents now objecting had followed the decision when it was issued.
From the Administrative Court to the Supreme Administrative Court
Many international schools and parents did not initially take the decision seriously, especially after some went to court. Amr Abdel Salam, a lawyer admitted to practise before the Court of Cassation, filed a lawsuit against the decision, arguing that the minister had no authority to amend curricula, that his role was to accredit international qualifications, and that the decision overburdened students. On 26 January 2025, the Administrative Court’s Seventh Education Circuit annulled the provision adding Arabic and history to international students’ overall scores in Case No. 98668 of Judicial Year 78. In its reasoning, it said the decision had been issued without being submitted to the specialist committees of the Supreme Council for Pre-University Education, constituting an encroachment by the minister on the council’s powers. It also said the decision had failed to take account of the nature of international systems accredited by foreign educational bodies and involved an “abuse of power”. Parents welcomed the ruling. Mostafa El-Sayed, the parent of a Grade 9 student in the British system, said the judiciary had “stood by students pursuing international qualifications”, and that subjects could not be added without considering the available time and the workload of other subjects.
In March 2025, the State Lawsuits Authority appealed the ruling on the minister’s behalf. On 16 April, the Supreme Administrative Court’s Appeals Examination Circuit adjourned consideration of the appeals until 23 April. On 14 May 2025, two days after the decree’s publication in the Official Gazette, the court’s Sixth Merits Circuit ruled in Appeal No. 44952 of Supreme Judicial Year 71 and 46 other appeals brought by the minister against parents of international and foreign-school students, overturning the Administrative Court’s ruling and dismissing the lawsuit. The decree thus returned to force. Al Arabiya described the ruling as requiring the teaching of Arabic and history in international schools. Nevertheless, some schools and parents continued to believe the decision would not be enforced until they reached an agreement with the ministry.
The legal question returned to parliament on 22 September 2026, when MP Ayman Mohasseb submitted a question to the prime minister and education minister about the legal basis for allocating 10% to each subject, whether the ministry had studied the decision’s impact on IGCSE and American Diploma students, and the position of the Ministry of Higher Education and the Supreme Council of Universities on how these marks would affect university admissions. In his question, Mohasseb said the ministry had appealed Administrative Court rulings before the Supreme Administrative Court and requested clarification of the rules that would apply to students “until a final judgment is issued”. Zawia3 found nothing in published coverage of the case indicating that appeals remained pending after the 14 May 2025 judgment, which overturned the first-instance ruling and dismissed the lawsuit. The parliamentary question also did not identify any pending appeal by number.
What the ministry says it found in schools
Hala Abdel Salam, head of the ministry’s Central Administration for General Education, said that while monitoring international schools’ compliance with teaching national identity subjects, the ministry was surprised to find “violations that can, at the very least, be described as Egyptian students on Egyptian soil who cannot read or write Arabic, yet received full marks in Arabic, history and religious education”. She repeated the same point in an interview published on 24 August 2026, saying schools had been required to be transparent with parents, and that some had been referred to prosecutors and placed under financial and administrative oversight.
In June 2026, after the previous academic year’s results, ministry spokesperson Shadi Zalta said that most international schools had recorded 100% pass rates in national identity subjects in non-certificate grades. The ministry sent monitoring committees to 45 schools and identified violations in 12, including blank answer sheets awarded full marks or 80%, and referred these cases to its legal affairs department. Zalta explained that international schools set and mark their own examinations in non-certificate grades, while the ministry sets preparatory-certificate examinations, and that only 12 of 600 schools had violations that led to remarking. He said 11,200 international-school students had taken the preparatory-certificate examination in Cairo governorate alone, with their pass rate in national identity subjects reaching 77.9%, meaning fewer than a quarter had difficulty passing. He added that appeals were available for a fee of EGP 35 (less than one dollar), including access to answer sheets, and that students who failed could take the second-round examination without additional fees. He denied that schools could legally charge parents up to EGP 8,000 (around $148) to retake national identity exams, and called for any school doing so to be reported.
At a session entitled “What Are Our Children Learning, and Does It Prepare Them for the Future?” during the Egypt Forum 2026 on 19 October, Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif said that “there will be no student in any school in Egypt who does not study history, Arabic and religion”. He added that it was unacceptable for Egyptian students attending schools in Egypt not to master its language or know its history. The ministry had not implemented the decision abruptly, but gradually over three or four years since its issuance in 2024, a period he considered sufficient to learn a language from scratch. He added that secondary students pursuing international qualifications had passed the ministry’s national identity examinations for the preparatory certificate, where passing had been compulsory. They were therefore not entirely unfamiliar with the subjects, and it could not be assumed that all students at the country’s 600 international schools had passed by cheating.
The minister said the situation dating back 30 years, which the ministry was now trying to address, had resulted in a pass rate of only around 48% in national identity subjects among international-school preparatory-certificate students in 2025/2026. This differs from the overall preparatory-certificate pass rate for private and international schools combined, which stood at 71.9% that year, compared with 88.5% in 2024/2025 and 91.8% in 2023/2024. The minister’s figure does not necessarily contradict the spokesperson’s June figure: the 77.9% concerns international-school students in Cairo governorate alone, while the minister did not specify the scope of the 48%, and the ministry has not published international-school students’ national identity results broken down by governorate. The minister said students pay little attention to subjects that do not count towards their overall score. He explained that, in the previous academic year, the ministry had allowed international schools to set non-certificate-grade exams appropriate to their own students’ levels and had expressed readiness to provide remedial programmes where needed. It was then surprised to find that students in around 30 schools had achieved 100% in national identity subjects. Monitoring committees were sent out and uncovered marking irregularities. When the ministry took over marking, the results changed and some students were referred to second-round exams. “This means there is a deliberate attempt to marginalise national identity subjects, which is unacceptable and will not be allowed,” he said.
At the same session, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said he had listened to parents’ complaints, and that the more important question was how well graduates of these schools mastered Arabic and understood their country’s identity. He described shortcomings in that regard as a major threat to national security and state intervention as a necessary step to protect students and national identity.
What parents fear
Shaimaa Ali Maher, the parent of a Grade 11 student in the American system and founder of the “Building Our Country Through Education” initiative, says allocating 20% of foreign secondary qualifications’ marks to Arabic and history examinations places a heavy burden on international-school students, especially this year. Parents only realised in September that the ministry was serious about implementing the decision, she says.
She tells Zawia3 that parents fear for their children’s chances of entering public universities. Officials say admission thresholds will not be affected because the decision applies equally to all students with foreign qualifications: if they all receive lower marks than usual, the thresholds for their cohort will fall. Parents, however, believe the workload of the two subjects is substantial and will affect students’ overall performance. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research allocates 5% of public university places to students holding equivalent Arab and foreign qualifications. On 10 August 2026, Higher Education Minister Abdel Aziz Konsowa said this share could increase if the number of these students rose, and that their prospects in the admissions process were good. The number of students with foreign qualifications grows year after year, intensifying competition for these places as fees at private and non-profit universities rise to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Shaimaa Maher says: “We were told clearly that we chose the high-fee international education route from the start, so we should continue university education the same way.”
She explains that this year’s Arabic and history curricula are extremely extensive and are being taught for the first time under the Egyptian Baccalaureate system, which became operational this year. Parents are therefore concerned not only about losing marks but also about students failing both subjects outright. Second-year secondary students in the Baccalaureate study four subjects, each worth 100 marks: three core subjects for all students, Arabic, the first foreign language and history, plus a fourth according to their chosen track. Students were surprised by the size of the new curricula the ministry made available on its website, with each subject in two parts and language subjects in three, one of which is a literary story. Shaimaa says: “If international-school students sit the same Arabic and history examinations as students in Egyptian schools, they will perform extremely badly, as if we were asking students in Egyptian schools to take an English examination under international systems.”
She points out that students’ familiarity with national identity subjects not counting towards the overall score has meant they have not mastered them well. Students used to sit Arabic exams, for example, aiming only for a pass mark, and may not have mastered some branches, such as grammar, which would be difficult to achieve in one year. She says applying the two subjects to students in a single year makes high marks impossible, particularly as competition for public university places intensifies.
The parent says the issue was raised at the Egypt Forum 2026 in October and the minister maintained his position, although he said international-school students were his children and would be taken into consideration, without specifying how. At the forum, the minister had said: “International-school students are our children and we will not abandon them.” He said the ministry wanted to support them and facilitate matters for their schools, not restrict them. Shaimaa Maher calls for implementation to begin in the early grades through the third preparatory year, exempting this year’s secondary-certificate cohort so students have time to address accumulated weaknesses in national identity subjects. Alternatively, she calls for special exams suited to international-school students’ levels, or model papers that this year’s examinations would not go beyond.
At the same forum, Nader Younan, a representative of the International School Owners’ Association, called for reconsidering the inclusion of the two subjects in the final score and proposed that they remain pass-or-fail subjects only. He also called for reviewing the annual increase in school fees, which he said reached 7%. The minister replied that the decision would apply to international-school students who obtained their preparatory certificate in 2024/2025 when they reached the third secondary year, following a grace period of up to four years. He said the current controversy reflected some students’ wish to complete their studies in less time, and that making the subjects pass-or-fail could reduce students’ interest in them. He cited Egypt’s Jesuit schools, which are nearly a century old, saying: “Students must not graduate from these schools without mastering their mother tongue.”
Other parents share these demands. Salwa El-Baz, a parent, said international-school students were calling for implementation of Decree 148 to be postponed pending a thorough study, and for no decision to be applied retroactively to those already enrolled when it was issued. She criticised the failure of any official to come forward to discuss its repercussions. Another parent, Shaimaa El-Ghazouli, said a student pursuing British qualifications studies 12 subjects, compared with six in the Egyptian Baccalaureate, while only 5% of university admissions places are allocated to international qualifications. She asked: “Where is the constitutional principle of equal opportunities among citizens of the same country?” She added that international-school students study national identity subjects throughout their schooling and sit preparatory-certificate exams in ministry examination centres, under its supervision and marking; what is new is counting the marks towards the total. Ali Hassan, another parent, said preserving identity should not mean imposing a burden that exceeds the nature of a student’s educational system or affecting their right to attend university in their own country, and that international qualifications have their own frameworks and assessment systems.
Dalia El-Hezawy, an education expert and founder of the Coalition of Egyptian Parents, stresses the importance of teaching national identity subjects and their role in connecting students to their homeland and strengthening their sense of belonging. But this year’s students must not be held responsible for years of neglect of these subjects in international schools. It is unfair to hold a student accountable for shortcomings for which they were not responsible, and addressing them requires foundational teaching and sufficient time to learn.
She tells Zawia3 it would have been better to start emphasising national identity subjects at the beginning of schooling rather than in higher grades, so that students would be prepared for fair assessment. If the ministry insists on including the two subjects in qualification scores, she believes this must be accompanied by curricula appropriate to international-school students who have spent many years studying in languages other than Arabic. Their transition to subjects requiring writing, comprehension and memorisation in Arabic is therefore a challenge that needs a transitional period. She stresses the need for support classes and intensive remedial programmes for international-school students, supervised by the ministry and delivered by qualified teachers. She proposes that this year the two subjects remain outside the overall score but require a pass mark of at least 70%, ensuring students take them seriously without imposing additional burdens during the transition.
EGP 1,500 or 25,000?
Alongside the academic workload, parents face a financial burden. Some circulated on Facebook an email reportedly sent by a school, charging EGP 25,000 (around $463) per subject to teach Arabic and history. The ministry then denied having increased national identity examination fees. On 31 October, it described the claims circulating on social media about EGP 25,000 per subject as “incorrect and misleading”. A ministry source said the official fee for national-subject examinations at secondary-certificate level for international-school students was EGP 1,500 (around $28) per subject under Article 7 of Ministerial Decree No. 116 of 2026. It is payable through electronic collection outlets and post offices and goes to the Educational Projects Fund. At the same time, the ministry announced it was removing the requirement to pay certificate accreditation fees in dollars to foreign bodies, with its own accreditation sufficient for admission to Egyptian universities.
Shaimaa Maher explains that the message sent to parents was deleted and that schools have not yet issued decisions imposing extra fees. However, adding the two subjects to the total and requiring schools to provide specialist teachers and sufficient teaching hours could prompt them to impose additional charges, because “everything in international education comes at a price”.
The dispute reached parliament. On 6 November 2026, MP Walaa El-Sabban, a member of the House of Representatives’ Housing Committee, submitted a request for a briefing to the prime minister and the ministers of education and higher education. She said some international schools had demanded up to EGP 25,000 per subject from parents. She called for disclosure of whether these sums had actually been collected, for which services and on what legal basis; publication of a detailed statement of official fees, the bodies collecting them and how they are spent; a ban on additional charges without a publicly stated legal basis; coordination with the Supreme Council of Universities over the decision’s impact on qualification equivalency and university admissions; and suitable curricula and a fair, transparent assessment system. She said “national identity is not a privilege for one group over another”, and that her objection concerned implementation, not the principle of teaching the subjects.
Education experts: agreement on the goal, disagreement over timing
Tamer Shawky, professor of educational psychology at Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Education, says the ministry is right to implement Ministerial Decree No. 148 of 2024, which he believes accords with the Constitution and the Education Law. He particularly stresses the importance of national identity subjects in strengthening students’ sense of belonging and pride in their country, and “making them immune to cultural invasion in the age of open skies and the internet”.
Shawky tells Zawia3 that the problem lies in the abrupt application of the decision to final-year students, even if the ministry gave them three years. National identity subjects require a foundation from the earliest school years, especially Arabic: a student who has not mastered it from childhood will struggle to master rhetoric, grammar and texts after reaching 15, affecting their preparedness.
Assem Hegazy, a professor at Cairo University’s Faculty of Graduate Studies for Education, agrees fully with the ministry’s position. He says the state has a vision for emphasising the teaching of national identity subjects, and that weakened loyalty and belonging threaten young people because of the “state of Westernisation” that he believes international-school students experience through curricula steeped in Western culture. “They are no longer connected to their homeland except by living in it, but do not share its people’s language, history and culture,” he says.
Hegazy tells Zawia3 that forming an attitude requires a cognitive dimension: students will not love their country or develop loyalty and a sense of belonging if they know nothing about it or its history. He says every curriculum contains intended information students may acquire through memorisation, but also conveys emotional messages they do not forget over time. Students may forget the date of the French campaign in Egypt, but through studying history as a whole they will not forget that Egypt faced many difficulties and overcame them. It is this emotional message that strengthens belonging.
Regarding complaints by some students and parents about the difficulty of national identity curricula, or demands to exclude them from the overall score, Hegazy says the requirements for obtaining any country’s qualification should not be subject to students’ objections, and that this is not unique to Egypt. He believes international schools helped marginalise national identity subjects because they did not count towards the total, failing to provide sufficient teaching hours or trained teachers. The ministry also reported that some schools manipulated students’ results. In his view, all of this justifies including the two subjects in the overall score. He says the smaller number of international-school students compared with public-school students is no justification for exempting them: they are, after all, Egyptian students, with strong prospects of holding prestigious positions at home and abroad, making it essential to ensure they know their country’s history and language.
None of the parties Zawia3 spoke to disagrees with teaching these subjects to all Egyptian students. The disagreement concerns counting them towards the secondary-certificate total for students accustomed to studying them to pass rather than excel. So far, the ministry’s position has not changed. At the forum, the minister said: “The decision will not be cancelled and will be implemented under the rules announced by the ministry.” No government response to Walaa El-Sabban’s briefing request had been issued by the time of publication.
