At the start of every academic year, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education faces a marked shortage in the number of teachers assigned to teach about 25 million male and female students at the various stages of education.
Although the ministry adopts, every year, a set of mechanisms and ideas to deal with the crisis, it does not succeed in fully closing the existing gap, which leaves many classes without the teachers needed to teach some subjects. Amid this reality, growing numbers of students and parents are turning to alternative educational sources, foremost among them private tutoring
Data from the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) reveal the continuing pressures facing the education sector as a result of the decline in the number of teachers against the continuous increase in the number of students. According to the Statistical Yearbook for 2025, the number of teachers in government schools during the 2023/2024 academic year reached about 804,600 male and female teachers, who taught 23.459 million male and female students at the various stages of general education.
In a statement the agency issued on the occasion of World Teachers’ Day on 5 October 2025, it explained that the number of general education teachers fell during the 2024/2025 academic year to 798,400 teachers, at a time when the number of pupils rose to 23.734 million.
The data also showed a decline in the number of technical education teachers, which reached 110,900 teachers during the 2024/2025 academic year, compared with 118,000 teachers the previous year. In contrast, the number of technical education students fell from 2.199 million students to 2.1 million students during the same period.
These indicators reflect the continuing erosion of teacher numbers as large numbers of them reach retirement age, coinciding with the pressures imposed by student growth, which has led unofficial estimates to speak of a shortage reaching at times about 400,000 teachers, despite assurances by the Minister of Education that the shortage of teachers of core subjects no longer exists.
As the new academic year 2026/2027, which starts on 12 September, approaches, the issue of teacher numbers sits at the top of the tasks the Ministry of Education and Technical Education has been charged with accomplishing, especially with the addition of new subjects that have never been taught before, and the Egyptian Baccalaureate system officially entering into force.
Egyptian Baccalaureate: A New Era or a Step Toward Education Inequality?
A shortage exceeding 400,000 teachers
For his part, an informed source at the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, who declined to be named, reveals to Zawia3 that the size of the shortage in teacher numbers exceeds 300,000 teachers, despite the ministry’s efforts to solve the problem in several ways, including: turning some subjects from core subjects into subjects outside the total score and reducing their teaching load, increasing the credit hours for teaching core subjects and reducing their teaching load in exchange for increasing the number of classes whose students the teacher teaches, and also transferring the specialisation of some teachers from subjects with no shortage to other subjects with a real shortage.
In contrast, Dr Tamer Shawky, an education expert and professor of educational psychology at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, tells Zawia3 that the shortage in teacher numbers exceeds 400,000 teachers according to the ministry’s statements, and with the addition of new classes this number has grown worse.
It should be noted that the number announced by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics includes all teachers, including those seconded to the offices of the educational administrations, the directorates and the ministry, as well as supervisors, which means that the announced figure is inaccurate and contradicts the reality of the classrooms.
When Mohamed Abdel Latif, Minister of Education and Technical Education, took over the ministerial portfolio in 2024, one of his first decisions was to restructure the Thanaweya Amma (general secondary certificate), by abolishing some subjects such as geology, turning some subjects into subjects not added to the total score, such as the second foreign language, and reducing the teaching of some subjects such as philosophy, psychology and biology, as each of them is now taught for only one year instead of two or three years during the stage.
The minister also decided to increase the length of the class period from 45 minutes to 50 minutes, while reducing the number of periods allocated to each subject, which helped make use of teachers to enter other classes that had no teacher available.
The informed source says the magic solution was to rely on per-class teachers, and during the 2025/2026 academic year, cooperation with them was open without restrictions, as every school principal suffering a shortage in one or more subjects has the right to advertise through the school’s page and submit the names of teachers who meet the conditions to the supervisors, and to have their names approved by the educational administration.
In August 2024, the Cabinet approved an increase in the fee per class for per-class teachers from EGP 20 to EGP 50.
According to the study “Education Reform in Egypt: Evidence, Progress and Future Vision”, presented by UNICEF in cooperation with the Ministry of Education at a large conference last May, 133,340 per-class teachers joined the education system, but the study did not clarify whether the number relates to one year or more, or whether all of them have remained in their posts.
After these measures, the minister announced that there was no shortage whatsoever of teachers of core subjects in schools.
Dr Tamer Shawky rejects reliance on per-class teachers, because in all cases the per-class teacher is less competent than the permanent teacher, since he does not bear real job responsibility, and many of them leave the school at any time during the academic year; so either per-class teachers are appointed, or there is a return to assigning graduates of faculties of education, while subjecting them to training courses at the Military Academy.
Zawia3 contacted a number of parents who confirmed that during the past year their children suffered from a shortage of teachers in some subjects. Fatma Ali, the mother of a second-grade primary pupil in Qalyubia, says her son spent several hours at school without a teacher on many days of the year, and for this reason she deliberately kept him away from school except on the days of the monthly exams or weekly assessments. Ayman Mohamed also says that his son, enrolled in the first year of secondary school, spent hours inside his school in Cairo without a teacher.
As for the student Ziad Samir, enrolled in the first year of secondary school at one of the schools of the El-Tebbin educational administration in Cairo, he says that throughout the past 2025/2026 year he had no religious education teacher, and his school had a single programming teacher responsible for all the classes. In general, from the month of Ramadan onwards he did not get classes at school, but would go to use the available internet for two or three hours and then return home, while the teachers stayed in their rooms, with only a few of them going up to the classes at the times of the weekly assessments.
It is worth noting that the Minister of Education and Technical Education sought to make religious education a core subject in all grades; after a debate in the concerned circles, it was decided to make it a pass-or-fail subject not added to the total score, but passing it requires 70% of the total marks allocated to it.
The source at the ministry comments on parents’ complaints, saying that the existence of schools suffering from a shortage despite the ministry’s efforts is due either to the school principal’s laxity in providing per-class teachers, or the educational administration’s refusal to bring in new teachers for budgetary reasons, or the absence of a teacher in a particular specialisation in some subjects: “Some areas do not have certain specialisations; for example, in some villages you may not find a physics teacher who accepts working per class for the secondary stage”.
He adds that, in general, the shortage of teachers in schools cannot be compared with previous years: “We are not suffering now as in past years; a shortage in teacher numbers has been filled, but despite the efforts the required number has not been completed, because there is no substitute for appointment competitions”.
He notes that among the problems facing the closing of the teacher shortage is the way per-class teachers are treated, as they have the right to leave work at any time, and given the difficult financial conditions and poor treatment they suffer inside schools, many of them resort to leaving their classes without teachers during the academic year: “The per-class teacher flees the school because he does not receive his dues for months, and faces poor treatment inside schools as a teacher without rights”.
This is confirmed by Asmaa Ibrahim, a teacher working on a per-class basis at a school in Qalyubia Governorate, who tells Zawia3 that teachers working under this system bear burdens not very different from those placed on appointed teachers, but they do not enjoy the same treatment or job stability.
She explains that their financial dues are sometimes delayed for several months, and what they are paid remains far below the minimum wage, even though they are committed to attending from the morning assembly until the end of the school day and carry the full weekly teaching load. She adds that their constant feeling of instability aggravates their suffering, as they are constantly reminded that their job status is not guaranteed, which pushes many to leave work at schools, especially the men among them, given the low financial return and the absence of any clear prospect of appointment, while years of work pass without any improvement in their professional or living conditions.
Somaya Ali, a permanent teacher at a school in Cairo, says that despite the circumstances, conscience plays a key role in the success of the system, pointing out that despite the difficult financial conditions teachers live in, some of them are keen to do their job, attend the classes assigned to them and explain well to the students. In contrast, some take the low salary, the burdens of multiple assessments and recording marks, and the preoccupation of many students with private tutoring as a justification for not doing their duty in the best way, so they deliberately arrange their notebooks and papers in preparation for inspection, but in reality do not do their duty.
She noted that what matters most to the inspectors from the educational administration is that the lesson-preparation notebook, the attendance register and the marks are in order, but this does not necessarily reflect the necessary role being performed inside the classroom.
In this regard, the informed source at the ministry says the solution to the teacher crisis lies in the state working along two parallel tracks: the first is the track of appointment through competitions as is customary, and the other is drafting contracts that preserve the rights of per-class teachers, without obliging the state to appoint them without a competition
Teacher appointment competitions
In 2022, the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, in cooperation with the Central Agency for Organisation and Administration, announced the organisation of competitions to appoint teachers, in response to the directives of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi to appoint 150,000 teachers over 5 years at a rate of 30,000 teachers a year. But despite reaching the fifth batch of the competition, not even half the number the President indicated has been appointed so far, for several reasons.
The informed source at the ministry explains that so far, despite testing 4 batches of the competition, only 60,000 or 62,000 teachers have been appointed, in addition to about 1,100 teachers from the first and second phases who are retaking their tests for the third time at their own expense, at EGP 7,000 per teacher, while the rest of the number is still undergoing tests, pointing out that the tests teachers undergo are difficult on the one hand, but the conditions for passing the competition are the most difficult.
There are several stages that a teacher applying for work must pass, the first being the Central Agency for Organisation and Administration test in specialisation, language and computing, then the Ministry of Education’s pedagogical training, then the Military College tests, and here many of them fail.
The source says the problem with the military tests lies not only in their difficulty but in the fact that they are usually announced at the last minute; for example, applicants in the fifth phase were surprised by new weight requirements in the Military College tests that had not been announced at the start of applications.
He notes that it is difficult to find a teacher who is academically suitable and at the same time athletically qualified: “However strong a young man is, he needs training, and his financial circumstances may not allow it. Doing push-ups and sit-ups 40 times each requires training, and so the applicant will find that he has failed because of something unrelated to his specialisation”.
The source explains that the strictness of the physical fitness standards, alongside the academic requirements, is based on a broader approach the state adopts across various employment sectors, built on selecting cadres that combine academic competence with health and physical readiness.
He points out that this approach rests on a vision that accelerating the pace of development requires personnel capable of working efficiently and enduring pressure for long periods, not merely possessing academic qualifications.
He adds that physical fitness requirements may be acceptable in themselves, but the problem lies in announcing them after advanced stages of the recruitment procedures, stressing that making these conditions available clearly and early would have given applicants sufficient opportunity to prepare for them.
Despite the periodic appointment competitions the ministry holds, the informed source stresses that the numbers being appointed are not enough to compensate for the teachers who leave the service every year on reaching retirement age.
He explains that about 50,000 teachers retire every year, while the number of new appointees does not exceed, at best, 20,000 to 22,000 teachers, which widens the gap between the actual needs of schools and the number of teachers available, and keeps the shortage crisis in place despite continuous appointment efforts.
New subjects without teachers
As of the 2025/2026 academic year, the Minister of Education and Technical Education added programming and artificial intelligence as an activity subject for first-year general secondary students, and decided to extend it to technical education students as of the next academic year, 2026/2027. This subject is new to the Ministry of Education and had no teachers, and computer or mathematics teachers were brought in to carry out its tasks.
As of the new academic year, the minister is adding new subjects that did not exist before, such as financial literacy, which has been prescribed for second-year secondary students in the form of an activity.
But the crisis lies in the core subjects added by the Egyptian Baccalaureate system, which enters into actual force in the new academic year. According to the Baccalaureate system, students in the engineering and computer science track in the second year of secondary school choose between two subjects, chemistry and programming, meaning that programming has become a core subject in the second year of secondary “Baccalaureate”, while in the business administration track students choose between accounting and business administration.
In this regard, Dr Tamer Shawky says the new subjects, especially the core ones, need a wider base of teachers, and if the ministry is not prepared to provide teachers for these subjects, the shortage will worsen.
The education expert points out that there are various plans for providing teachers, including bringing in teachers of commercial subjects, or training mathematics teachers, even though there is a big difference between mathematics and commercial subjects, or bringing in per-class teachers from outside, and here we will come up against the problem of training; or we can speak more frankly and say that Baccalaureate students will not go to schools, and will look for subject teachers in the “centres”.
But the informed source at the ministry says that, as for non-core subjects such as programming in the first year of general and technical secondary, and financial literacy in the second year of secondary, they will be like the subjects that appear on students’ certificates without them knowing anything about them: “Like the fields and activities subjects. As for the core subjects, so far there is no information about them, and therefore it is premature to talk about their teachers”, pointing out that the option of bringing in teachers of commercial subjects has been ruled out because technical education suffers a large shortage in the number of its teachers, which makes it expected that a new competition will be announced next academic year to appoint technical education teachers.
In the 1990s, the Ministry of Education stopped assigning graduates of faculties of education, which was sometimes cited as one of the reasons for the shortage in teacher numbers, but the informed source at the ministry stresses that thinking has now changed, and a return to assigning education graduates has become impossible, as there is a trend towards abolishing faculties of education and relying on graduates of other faculties after they obtain a diploma in education. Also, there are hundreds of thousands of unappointed education graduates.
The loss of the school’s role
On the educational impact of the absence of teachers from schools, Dr Tamer Shawky, professor of educational psychology at the Faculty of Education at Ain Shams University, says there is a profound effect on students, represented in: students’ attendance at school being without effect, the loss of the school’s role in teaching and upbringing, and the activity of alternative educational institutions in the form of private tutoring centres, which allows them to devour the money of parents and students by exploiting the lack of teachers.
In addition, there is the absence of the teacher as a role model, who conveys to students not only information but also behaviours and ethics, as well as the increase in violence in schools; although the absence of teachers is not the main cause, the shortage of teachers affects good supervision inside the school, and the absence of the teacher as a role model makes the student follow the behaviours he learns from his surroundings and from social media.
The education expert points out that the Minister of Education’s statement that there is no shortage of core-subject teachers, implying that activity teachers are not fully available, helps aggravate the crisis of violence inside schools, because cultural, artistic and sports activities help absorb students’ emotional energies, and without them this energy may come out in aggressive form.
The teacher shortage crisis in Egypt appears to be far more than a mere numerical deficit that can be overcome through appointment competitions or by relying on per-class teachers. Between the thousands of teachers who leave the service every year, the recruitment conditions that exclude large numbers of applicants, and the profession’s declining financial and professional appeal, the gap between the needs of schools and the cadres available within them is widening.
