At the beginning of each academic year, Egypt’s Ministry of Education and Technical Education faces a significant shortage of teachers for approximately 25 million pupils across different stages.
Annual initiatives have not completely closed the gap. Classes can lack teachers for particular subjects, pushing more families towards alternatives, especially private tuition.
CAPMAS’s 2025 statistical yearbook recorded approximately 804,600 teachers in government schools in 2023/24, teaching 23.459 million pupils in general education. Its statement for World Teachers’ Day on 5 October 2025 gave 798,400 general-education teachers in 2024/25, against 23.734 million pupils.
Technical-education teachers declined from 118,000 to 110,900 over the same period, while technical pupils fell from 2.199 million to 2.1 million.
General-education teacher numbers decline
Retirements and rising pupil numbers put continuing pressure on staffing. Some estimates place the shortage at around 400,000, although the education minister says shortages in core-subject teachers have been resolved. These are different claims: staffing totals do not directly measure the number of unfilled classroom posts.
As the 2026/27 year approaches—the Arabic report cites a 12 September start—staffing is a central ministry task, particularly with new subjects and the Egyptian Baccalaureate programme’s implementation.
Conflicting claims about the scale of the shortage
A knowledgeable ministry source, speaking anonymously, tells Zawia3 the shortage exceeds 300,000 despite measures including moving some subjects outside the total examination score, adjusting teaching periods and workloads, assigning teachers more classes, and transferring teachers between specialisms.
Educational psychologist Tamer Shawky, a professor at Ain Shams University’s Faculty of Education, cites a shortage exceeding 400,000, referring to ministry statements and additional classrooms that have increased requirements.
Official teacher totals include people seconded to district, directorate and ministry offices, as well as supervisors. Consequently, those aggregate counts cannot be assumed to represent teachers actually available in classrooms.
Pupils per teacher increase
| School year | Pupils per teacher |
|---|---|
| 2023/24 | 29.2 |
| 2024/25 | 29.7 |
After taking office in 2024, Education Minister Mohamed Abdel Latif restructured secondary education. Geology was removed, second foreign languages became outside the total score, and subjects including philosophy, psychology and biology were limited to one year rather than two or three.
Lesson length increased from 45 to 50 minutes while the number of periods allocated to subjects was reduced, allowing teachers to take additional classes that lacked staff.
The ministry source describes per-lesson teachers as the main temporary solution. In 2025/26, school heads with shortages could advertise on their school’s page, submit eligible names to subject supervisors and obtain education-district approval.
In August 2024, the cabinet approved increasing payment per lesson from EGP 20 to EGP 50.
A UNICEF–Education Ministry study, “Education Reform in Egypt: Evidence, Progress and Future Vision,” presented in May 2026, reported recruitment of 133,340 per-lesson teachers. The report says the study did not specify whether this total covered one or several years or whether all remained at work.
Following these measures, the minister announced there was no remaining shortage in core subjects.
Shawky opposes dependence on per-lesson teachers, arguing that insecure employment and limited formal responsibility can undermine continuity, with teachers leaving during the year. He advocates appointing them or restoring placement of education-faculty graduates, alongside training at the military academy. This is his assessment, not evidence that every temporary teacher is less capable.
Parents interviewed by Zawia3 describe shortages during the past year. Fatma Ali, whose son is in the second primary year in Qalyubia, says he often spent hours without a teacher, so she kept him home except for monthly examinations and weekly assessments. Ayman Mohamed says his first-year secondary son likewise spent hours at a Cairo school without instruction.
Ziad Samir, a first-year secondary pupil in Al Tebin, Cairo, says his school had no religious-education teacher throughout 2025/26 and one programming teacher for all classes. From Ramadan onwards, he says he often attended mainly to use the internet for two or three hours before leaving, while only a few teachers came for weekly assessments.
The minister had sought to make religious education a core subject throughout school. After debate, it remained a pass/fail subject outside the total score, with a 70 percent pass threshold.
Responding to parents’ complaints, the ministry source says residual shortages can result from a school head failing to secure temporary staff, a district refusing new recruitment for budget reasons or a lack of a particular specialism locally. In some villages, for example, no physics teacher may be willing to teach secondary classes on a per-lesson basis.
“We do not suffer as we did in previous years,” the source says. “Some shortages have been filled, but the required number is still incomplete; recruitment competitions remain essential.”
Per-lesson teachers without stability
Temporary teachers can leave at any time, the source adds. Poor finances, delayed pay and degrading treatment encourage departures during the year: “A per-lesson teacher leaves because payment is delayed for months, and they are treated as a teacher without rights.”
Asmaa Ibrahim, a per-lesson teacher in Qalyubia, says she carries responsibilities comparable to permanent staff without equal treatment or security.
Payments can be months late and remain far below the minimum wage despite attendance from morning assembly to the end of the school day and a full weekly teaching load, she says. Repeated reminders that employment is insecure drive many, particularly men under financial pressure, to leave without a clear route to appointment.
Somaya Ali, a permanent teacher in Cairo, says professional conscience also matters. Some teachers continue teaching diligently despite poor pay; others use salaries, repeated assessments, paperwork or pupils’ private tuition as reasons not to fulfil classroom responsibilities, while ensuring their records look orderly for inspections.
District inspectors focus on lesson-planning, attendance and grades records, she says, but correct paperwork does not necessarily mean effective classroom instruction.
The ministry source calls for two parallel approaches: continued appointment through recruitment competitions and contracts that protect per-lesson teachers’ rights without guaranteeing appointment outside competitive selection.
Recruitment competitions and military tests
In 2022, the ministry and the Central Agency for Organisation and Administration launched recruitment competitions following a presidential instruction to appoint 150,000 teachers over five years, or 30,000 annually. The process has reached a fifth round, but the report says fewer than half the intended total have been appointed.
The ministry source puts appointments after four tested cohorts at around 60,000–62,000. Approximately 1,100 applicants from the first two rounds are taking tests for a third time at their own expense, at EGP 7,000 each, while others remain in testing. The source says passing all conditions is harder than the academic tests themselves.
Applicants undergo agency tests in their specialism, language and computing, educational training by the ministry, then Military Academy tests, where many fail.
The problem is not only difficulty but late announcements of criteria, the source says. Fifth-round applicants were surprised by new weight requirements that were not included at the start.
An academically suitable teacher may need training to meet physical criteria, which finances may not permit. The source cites requirements such as 40 press-ups and 40 abdominal exercises, arguing that applicants can fail for reasons unrelated to teaching specialism.
The source describes strict physical standards as part of a broader state approach to selecting staff with academic competence, health and stamina for sustained work under development pressures. Even if fitness criteria are acceptable in principle, early disclosure would allow applicants to prepare, the source argues.
Recruitment does not replace the number retiring, the source says: approximately 50,000 teachers leave annually, against at best 20,000–22,000 new appointments. These are the interviewee’s estimates, distinct from CAPMAS’s net staffing totals.
New subjects without established staffing
Programming and artificial intelligence were introduced as an activity subject for first-year general secondary pupils in 2025/26, with extension to technical education planned for 2026/27. Without an established teaching specialism, schools used computing or mathematics teachers.
Financial literacy is also planned as an activity for second-year secondary pupils. The greater challenge concerns new core subjects in the Egyptian Baccalaureate: engineering and computing pupils choose between chemistry and programming, while business-track pupils choose between accounting and business administration.
Shawky says new core subjects require a broader teacher base. Options include commercial-subject teachers, retraining mathematics teachers despite substantial differences, or recruiting external per-lesson teachers—but each raises training and staffing questions. Without preparation, he fears pupils will seek these subjects in private tuition centres rather than schools.
The ministry source expects activity subjects to risk becoming names on certificates with little actual instruction, as has happened with some existing activities. For new core subjects, the source says staffing details are not yet available. Transferring technical commercial teachers is unlikely given their own shortages, and another technical-teacher competition may be needed.
The ministry stopped automatic placement of education-faculty graduates in the 1990s, sometimes cited as a cause of shortages. The source considers restoring it unlikely and describes a direction towards recruiting graduates of other faculties after an education diploma, alongside the large backlog of unappointed education graduates. That is the source’s description of a policy direction, not an enacted abolition of education faculties.
The school’s role at risk
Shawky says missing teachers undermine both instruction and the school’s broader educational role, enabling private tuition centres to exploit families’ need for alternatives.
Teachers model behaviour and values as well as communicate knowledge. Although shortages are not the sole cause of school violence, he says they weaken supervision and leave pupils more dependent on behaviour learned elsewhere and through social media.
He argues that concentrating only on core-subject staffing can leave cultural, artistic and sports activities understaffed, removing constructive outlets for pupils’ emotions and energy.
The shortage is more than a numerical gap to be solved by competitions or temporary teaching. Retirements, restrictive recruitment conditions and declining financial and professional attractiveness widen the distance between schools’ needs and the staff available to meet them.
