{"id":17713,"date":"2025-01-15T18:41:12","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T16:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=17713"},"modified":"2026-10-24T15:08:04","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:08:04","slug":"bachelor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/bachelor\/","title":{"rendered":"Egypt\u2019s Baccalaureate Proposal: Better Schooling or a New Burden on Families?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The <\/span>announcement<\/span><\/a> by the Minister of Education, Mohamed Abdel Latif, of the application of the baccalaureate system instead of Thanaweya Amma (general secondary) to first-year secondary students starting next year, <\/span>has sparked a state of wide controversy and condemnation in educational and political circles and among social media users in Egypt. Many see it as a step backwards, since the <\/span>baccalaureate<\/span><\/a> system was in force in Egypt in the period (1854\u20131962), while some considered that the new study system will increase the financial burdens on Egyptian families and that it amounts to a step towards privatising education and the government reducing its rates of spending on it, at a time when large sectors of Egyptian society are suffering from the repercussions of the economic crisis, which has cast its shadow on the quality of education and on the ability of children from the poorest families and those at risk of poverty to reach school desks.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new <\/span>baccalaureate<\/span><\/a> system, which the Cabinet has <\/span>approved<\/span><\/a> in principle and directed that its implementation mechanisms be discussed in the Ministerial Group for Human Development and that a final formula be agreed upon for the government to put to societal dialogue, consists of two stages: the preparatory stage (first year of secondary school) and the main stage (second and third years of secondary school). It is based on merging scientific, literary and artistic subjects, and <\/span>includes<\/span><\/a> the teaching of 14 subjects, seven of them in the first year of general secondary and seven in the second and third years of general secondary. The subjects are divided over at least two years, with exam opportunities provided twice a year, the first free of charge and the second for a fee of EGP 500 per exam, and the maximum number of years of study for the main stage is four years, excluding the first year of secondary school, as Abdel Latif explained during the <\/span>meeting<\/span><\/a> of the Egyptian Cabinet last Wednesday. He considered that the basic philosophy of this system is based on strengthening students’ critical and analytical thinking skills instead of relying on memorisation and rote learning<\/span>,<\/span> within a comprehensive educational framework that includes continuous assessment. It is planned to be <\/span>applied<\/span><\/a> to public schools, public language schools and private schools in which students study under the Egyptian system, and it will not be applied to students of schools that award non-Egyptian certificates, such as international schools and Nile schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

The <\/span>fee<\/span><\/a> for retaking the exam in a single subject under the baccalaureate system is EGP 500<\/span>, equivalent to EGP 3,500 for one student to retake the exam in all seven subjects. With 750,000 students a year in the third year of secondary school, this means that if half of the students retook the exams, the Ministry of Education could collect more than EGP 1.3 billion, while a retake by 25% of students would equal about EGP 656 million, which raises controversy over the financial burdens on families.<\/p>\n

The fears over the application of the baccalaureate system come at a time when the rates of government spending on education in Egypt are lower than the rates<\/a> prevailing in most of the world. The Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, acknowledged <\/a> during the National Youth Conference in Alexandria in June 2023 that the government had not committed to the education percentages set in the 2014 Constitution, which oblige the state to allocate 4% and 2% of gross national product to spending on pre-university education and university education respectively, revealing that basic education alone needs more than EGP 400 or 500 billion for about 25 million students, an amount the government cannot allocate at present. There are no recent official data on what Egyptian families spend on their children’s education, but the income and expenditure survey<\/a> issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) for 2019\/2020 showed that the average annual household spending on education amounted to EGP 8,850.6, or 12.5% of total household spending. Average household spending on education in urban areas was about EGP 12,829.8, or 15.7%, compared with EGP 5,720.2 in rural areas, or 9.2% of total household spending.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to <\/span>Article 19<\/span><\/a> of the 2014 Constitution: “The state shall allocate a percentage of government spending to education of no less than 4% of gross national product, which shall gradually increase until it is in line with global rates”. Although budget spending on the education sector rose to more than EGP 125.6 billion during the period from July to November of the 2024\/2025 fiscal year, an increase of EGP 26 billion over the same period of the previous year, a growth rate of 26.1%, according to the monthly <\/span>report<\/span><\/a> of the Ministry of Finance issued in January 2025, the actual spending on health and education in the 2024\/2025 budget amounted to only about 3.8% of gross domestic product. Actual spending on education amounted to about EGP 295 billion, according to the data of the <\/span>functional classification<\/span><\/a> of expenditures contained in the draft general budget, and spending on education represents about 2.3% of gross domestic product, which stands at about EGP 13 trillion.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Egyptian Teachers Challenge the Education Minister’s Decisions in Court<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/b>he End of Free Education <\/b><\/h1>\n

The <\/span>researcher at the National Centre for Educational Research and chair of the board of trustees of the Egyptian Centre for the Right to Education, <\/span>Kamal Mogheeth<\/b>,<\/span> believes that the government’s orientations on education are consistent with a political system that identifies with savage capitalism and submits to the conditions and prescription of the World Bank, which demands cutting government expenditure, reducing subsidies and decreasing the number of state employees, without social reforms, and with the philosophy the President clearly announced when he said that nothing is free, and “what will education do in a lost nation?”, and his reference to the possibility of educating a minority well instead of educating the majority. He stresses that the baccalaureate system is not the product of experiments or research, but aims to reduce government spending on education to satisfy the International Monetary Fund, which constitutes an assault on the Egyptian Constitution, which stipulates that education is free in state institutions.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “There seems to be a package of policies, beginning with criticism of the numbers of graduates of theoretical faculties and the direction to study programming, which only limited numbers will be able to study, coinciding with the rise in tuition fees. With rising poverty rates, this has led to a decline in the proportion of those enrolled in compulsory education because their families are unable to pay for their education. Then the idea of bringing back the kuttabs appears. Do they want to reach the point where the state lifts its hand from education, and the majority are only proficient in reading and writing skills and work as servants for the educated rich?”<\/span><\/p>\n

The dropout rate from education in Egypt stands at 0.87% in the preparatory stage, about 43,351 dropouts, compared with 0.2%, or 25,380 dropouts, in the primary stage, according to the latest statistic<\/a> published by the Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics in 2022. Marsa Matrouh Governorate recorded<\/a> the highest dropout rates in the primary stage between 2019\/2020 and 2020\/2021, at 0.39%, followed by Assiut at 0.36%, while New Valley Governorate was the lowest at 0.02%, followed by South Sinai Governorate at 0.05%. The proportion of dropouts from education in the primary stage in the period 2019\/2020 and 2020\/2021 was about 0.2%, of whom 0.17% were girls and 0.23% boys, according to the data and statistics issued by the Ministry of Education and contained in the Annual Statistical Book 2021\/2022.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Cancelling Subjects from Thanaweya Amma in Egypt: A Step Towards Change or a Reduction of Education?<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Selective Education<\/b><\/h1>\n

Writer, thinker and researcher in political science <\/span>Ammar Ali Hassan<\/b> explains to Zawia3 that there is a government trend to reduce spending on education, represented by increasing tuition fees from the primary stage to university, the authorities stopping the establishment of public universities and leaving the matter to businessmen and foreign universities, and opening the door to unpaid volunteering to teach in public schools. He considers this the height of disregard for education, that the competition to hire 30,000 teachers was the height of farce with its absurd conditions, and that the Minister of Education should not remain in his post after the forgery of his certificate was proven.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hassan points out that he has not yet seen the precise details of the decision to apply the baccalaureate system, which the Ministry of Education is preparing to apply as an alternative to Thanaweya Amma, so as to decide whether this means the authorities withdrawing from spending on education or moving to educate a small few and leave the majority without education, or whether it is an attempt by the government to develop the current education system. But he stresses the need to put the decision to societal discussion and that decisions must not be made behind closed doors.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “In my estimation, the authorities will move towards selective education. In light of the communications revolution and its link to democracy, it is absurd to think of restricting education to certain groups and educating the rest in kuttabs, or linking education only to work and employing a certain group in the wheels of power. This is an orientation adopted by Khedive Abbas, who believed in educating only the Turks and leaving Egyptians ignorant so they would remain cheap labour, but it later became clear that education is linked to nation-building and linked to freedom and democracy. That is why the authorities do not want the people to be educated, so that they do not call for their rights and duties. Scarcity of financial resources must not be used as a pretext, because money is spent on cement, stones and roads instead of building schools, and spending on education comes mainly from taxpayers’ pockets and does not enjoy the huge budgets earmarked for other sectors, and this cannot be linked to the demands of the International Monetary Fund.”<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Suppressed Anger at the Exam Hall Doors: Physical Abuse of Thanaweya Amma Students<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Rising Pace of Privatisation<\/b><\/h1>\n

Economic expert <\/span>Elhamy El-Merghany<\/b>, vice president of the Socialist Popular Alliance Party, stresses to Zawia3 that there is a government trend towards privatising education, as evidenced by the failure to commit to the constitutional percentages, the problem of classroom density and dropping out of education, giving the private sector a free hand, offering paid services in public schools, and the existence of a shortage of 250 classrooms and 650,000 teachers. He considers these indicators of the privatisation of education and the state abandoning its responsibility, as the Egyptian government has for years deliberately reduced spending on education from 12% of general budget expenditure in 2014\/2015 to 7.6% in 2024\/2025, and reduced spending on education from 3.9% to 1.7% of gross domestic product. In this way, government spending is reduced and education is commodified, turning from a public service into a commodity obtained by whoever can afford its cost.<\/span><\/p>\n

He says: “For years Egypt has been living the economy of the mall and the compound, which needs salespeople, cleaners, maintenance workers and security guards. The elite are educated in international schools or outside Egypt, while the education of the poor is repellent, despite the Takaful assistance, which neither nourishes nor satisfies hunger. Since education turned into a business attractive to businessmen, and since the shift from private non-profit universities to private and international universities, and even the creation of a parallel education inside public universities with fees and foreign languages, the pace of privatisation in the higher education sector has risen.”<\/span><\/p>\n

A report<\/a> issued by the World Bank in 2022 had confirmed that the decline in public spending on education in Egypt has led to a shortage in the number of teachers and classrooms in Egypt and their overcrowding, and a decline in the quality of education. It showed that there are currently more than 24 million students in the pre-university stages of education in the country, about 90% of them in public schools, that there are about 56 students on average per classroom in the primary stage, and that there are nearly one million teachers working in the field of education, in addition to 500,000 people working in school administration, supervision and maintenance crews. The shortage reaches 250,000 teachers, and Egypt needs to build about 117,000 classrooms within five years to ease the pressure on public schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading:<\/b> For Those Who Can Afford It: The “Credit Hours” Business Sweeps Public Universities<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Deepening Religious Polarisation<\/b><\/h1>\n

One of the criticisms levelled at the new baccalaureate system is making religious education a core subject allocated 100 marks of the total score, since this will open the door to one-upmanship and the sectarian dimension, according to the<\/span> warning<\/span><\/a> of politician Mohamed Abul Ghar, former president of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, on the one hand. It will also create a crisis because there is no faculty or institute to graduate teachers of Christian education, and it will provoke the anger of the Christian denominations in Egypt, since Evangelical, Catholic and Protestant Christians had accepted a moderate religious education subject that does not raise doctrinal problems, and may not accept this under exams and high marks. It will also open the door to comparisons and one-upmanship, which will open the gates of hell on the nation, in the words of the researcher at the National Centre for Educational Research and chair of the board of trustees of the Egyptian Centre for the Right to Education, Kamal Mogheeth, who asks, in his conversation with Zawia3, how we can accept that religion be subjected to market standards, private tutoring and cheating in exams, which is what happens with the other subjects?<\/span><\/p>\n

This comes in conjunction with the launch by Osama Al-Azhari, Minister of Endowments, of the “Return of the Kuttabs<\/a>” initiative. The kuttabs were common in Egypt’s villages in the 19th century, and the minister said the initiative aims to memorise the Holy Quran, know its meanings and learn the fundamentals of the Islamic religion through the moderate Azhari approach at the hands of a select elite of memorisation teachers, and to attract young people and immunise them, within the presidential initiative<\/a> “A New Beginning for Building the Human Being”, in implementation of the directives of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who directed<\/a>, during his meeting with Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Minister of Endowments Osama Al-Azhari, a careful study of the initiative to bring back the kuttabs and the improvement of the conditions of imams and preachers. Meanwhile, Mohamed Hashad, head of the Syndicate of Quran Reciters, announced<\/a> that there are 16,000 memorisation teachers and reciters, among them 500 women, ready to train memorisation teachers and instructors in the Return of the Kuttabs initiative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some fear that the return of the kuttabs will deepen religious polarisation and reinforce sectarianism, since millions of Christian children will not enrol in them and will rely on church education in Sunday schools. Many believe that the kuttabs, which had been widespread in Egypt since the late nineteenth century, became obsolete with the passage of time at the start of the sixties, after the spread of public schools, especially as the former relied on memorisation, rote learning and absolute obedience, and lacked pedagogical means in teaching, as the sheikhs relied on oppressing the children and their fear of painful and humiliating punishment, by beating the feet with a thick stick after tying them with a rope, in what was known as the “falaka”.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Recommended reading: <\/b>Forbidden Testimonies: Discrimination Against Christians in Egyptian Courts<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Closer to the IG System <\/b><\/h1>\n

<\/span>As <\/span>Adel Saraya<\/b>, professor of educational technology at the Faculty of Specific Education, adviser to the president of Zagazig University and former dean of the Faculty of Education at Suez Canal University in Al-Arish, explains, the main reasons for the objection to the baccalaureate system go back to the term itself, which has taken us back decades, in addition to merging some subjects and turning religious education into a core subject in the third year of secondary school, which will raise a contentious crisis and face the problem of the unavailability of teachers and curriculum experts specialising in the Christian religion, instead of focusing on Arabic, history, geography, culture and civic education. The biggest problem is that the system stems from a personal proposal by the Minister of Education, closer to the <\/span>IG system<\/span><\/a> applied in his international schools, but it did not stem from the outputs of the National Dialogue sessions or Egypt Vision 2030.<\/span><\/p>\n

He tells Zawia3: “One of the problems of the new system is that it will make Egyptian families live under pressure for 24 months. A system similar to the <\/span>IG system<\/span><\/a> or the Japanese schools system will not necessarily suit the majority of Egyptians. Although it reduces the number of subjects, it has drawbacks in that the student will spend a full school year without studying Arabic and English. The biggest problem lies in developing curricula and changing study systems without making sure that there are qualified teachers to teach them and how ready the school buildings are, which requires first resorting to National Dialogue sessions, the Teachers Syndicate and professors of faculties of education to discuss the proposed system before it is approved. Providing a competent teacher remains the basic guarantee for the success of any education system.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The professor of educational technology calls on the political leadership to form a Supreme Authority for Long-Term Educational Planning, comprising about 60 experts in various fields, who would work on adapting educational curricula from kindergarten onwards to serve Egypt’s future vision of its identity and shape; to pay attention to technical, craft and vocational education and adapt curricula to give students the skills needed for the labour market; and to pay attention to community education schools, or one-classroom schools, found in Egypt’s villages, which are joined by those who have dropped out of education, those unable to enrol in education and the elderly, and to teach them Arabic, English, computing, religious guidance and civic education, instead of bringing the kuttabs back to work, employing graduates of the community education department of the Faculty of Education at Zagazig University to work in those schools, and not the preacher who speaks only about the religious side and neglects life skills.<\/span><\/p>\n

While educational experts Zawia3 spoke to believe that the new system resembles the <\/span>IG system<\/span><\/a> or the British diploma, which is an international secondary certificate that serves as an alternative to Thanaweya Amma and through which one can enrol in international, Egyptian or private universities, some believe that the new baccalaureate will increase enrolment rates in equivalent certificates and private universities among children of the upper-middle classes. Writer and researcher Sara Allam believes that the new system sends a clear message to the upper-middle class and above to move away from Egyptian education towards equivalent certificates, a trend that has existed for many years, noting that admission rates for students with equivalent certificates have declined in public universities in a way that has made these certificates a gateway to private and foreign universities.<\/span><\/p>\n

The writer says in a post<\/a> she wrote: “This is a privatisation of education carried out by corrupting the entry gate to public universities, which, with time, can no longer compete in the market of three-letter universities, considering that this situation leads to an education that does not create class mobility. The rich pay and preserve their children’s opportunities, and the poor remain in the vortex of poor, exhausting public education that does not lead to the job opportunities of the children of the rich, as a result of public policies and the appointment of an owner of private schools at the head of education in Egypt, so that it will be the end of the era of free education.”<\/p>\n

For his part, educational expert and university professor <\/span>Mohamed Khalil<\/b> believes that the state of education in Egypt is regrettable, because the student does not feel the value of the free education available since the fifties, and it has turned into a commercial activity whereby what parents save on tuition fees they pay to educational centres for the private lessons their children receive. He believes that if the baccalaureate system is applied, the student will be forced to work hard in his studies to obtain a good score from the first attempt, to spare his family paying the exam entry fee for the second attempt. He considers that making religious education a core subject is necessary in light of the collapse of the system of morals and is an alarm bell for parents, but he does not expect parliament and societal opinion to accept bringing the kuttabs back to work, as they followed outdated teaching methods that do not fit the age of digital technology and will lead to sectarian problems.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The expert criticises the cancellation of Arabic and English as core subjects in the third year of secondary school and the neglect of the second foreign language, which will negatively affect the student cadres who will enrol in universities, in addition to the failure to train teaching cadres on the new study system before it is applied. But he does not reject imposing fees for retaking exams, considering that free education is available in most countries of the world. He praises the baccalaureate system’s creation of new educational tracks suited to the labour market to improve the economic situation, namely: the entrepreneurship track, the literature and arts track, the medicine and sciences track, and the engineering and computer science track, and the granting of a second chance for students to improve their scores, as is the case in the IG system, which includes core and elective subjects, the existence of advanced-level subjects and the possibility of sitting the exam twice.<\/span><\/p>\n

The rising pace of privatisation in the education sector and the experts’ fears that the government has orientations to reduce the proportion of spending on education, which is still below the constitutionally set percentages, and to apply selective education to particular groups, contradict what the Ministry of Finance<\/span> announced<\/span><\/a> in its monthly report issued in January 2025 about its target for spending on education to reach 24.4% of total public spending in the state’s general budget for the 2024\/2025 fiscal year, and for the budget to allocate EGP 565 billion to pre-university education, EGP 293 billion to higher and university education, and EGP 140 billion to scientific research.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether the “baccalaureate” system is a step on the road towards reducing spending on education, abolishing its free provision and expanding its privatisation, as many fear, or an attempt by the Ministry of Education to create a study system to replace Thanaweya Amma, whose failure and deterioration many experts acknowledge, and amid fears that the new system, which coincides with the Return of the Kuttabs initiative, will increase the level of religious polarisation in Egypt, the problem of dropping out of education remains, exacerbated by the increase in the poverty rate in Egypt, which rose to 32.5% in 2022, , up from 29.7% in the 2019-2020 fiscal year, according to the <\/span>World Bank<\/span><\/a>, amid the continuing grinding economic crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Editorial correction: The first version of the report stated that the 2014 Constitution obliges the state to allocate 4% and 2% of gross domestic product to spending on pre-university and university education; the correct position is that the two percentages are calculated from gross national product, according to the text of Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fears over the application of the baccalaureate system come at a time when the rates of government spending on education in Egypt are lower than the rates prevailing in most of the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":10338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[413],"tags":[],"kateb":[1550],"class_list":["post-17713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-society-en","kateb-aya-yasser"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/\u0627\u0644\u062a\u0639\u0644\u064a\u0645.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17713"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24162,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17713\/revisions\/24162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17713"},{"taxonomy":"kateb","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kateb?post=17713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}