Egypt's Educational Structure: A Culture of Corruption
Egypt’s educational structure allows the teacher to be “the sole provider of knowledge with the ultimate power in the classroom [which] sets the students at a disadvantage, making them vulnerable” (Ghazal 113). Independent learning is discouraged through curricular emphasis on rote learning and memorization. Whether or not students may continue onto a state-subsidized university or simply a secondary- or tertiary-level technical program is determined entirely based on their standardized test scores. At the final year of each level of education, students take these high-stakes national tests that determine their next possible course of education, and “[t]his makes students focus on studying only at the end of each of those stages and ignore school work in between” (Ghazal 101). However, if their test scores are poor, but they wish to continue on the track to a university, students can continue their studies in a private school instead. Poor families cannot afford to do this, and so this competitive and expensive educational system places them at a disadvantage. This structure contributes to making cost a substantial obstacle to quality and continuing education. Combined with the economic advantage of educating sons rather than daughters, women are more likely to drop out of school at an early age due to low scores (Egypt 41).
Egypt’s low-paid teachers exploit this system for their own benefit and create an even more hostile and discriminatory educational system. In many schools, “teachers refuse to teach in class, instead forcing each student to pay for private lessons in order to even be exposed to the material that will be tested” (Ghazal 114). Therefore students attend public school during the day, learn nothing, and are manipulated by teachers into attending private tutoring sessions. The Egyptian Ministry of Education perpetuates this by assigning official textbooks which are “so poorly presented as to force students to rely on expensive auxiliary textbooks [… which] cements the need for private tutoring in order to complete and revise the centrally mandated curriculum” (Sobhy). However, even within these private lessons educational quality is poor since students rely on “lenient assessment” from the teachers that they pay to tutor them to give them passing grades on their exams (Sobhy). It is in this way that in 2010, 35 percent of Egyptian secondary-level graduates were illiterate (Nachazel 52).
This structure of corrupt private tutoring is not only supported by the official textbook strategies, but also enforced via harassment and abuse by the teachers themselves. As young as the primary level, teachers “coerced students into taking private classes with them by harassing them in class and lowering their grades” (Ghazal 114). There is widespread cultural acceptance of this, and in fact “endorsement of beating as an appropriate and effective disciplinary technique, at least for the poor” (Sobhy). Though Egyptian law has clear regulations which prohibit both physical and emotional punishment in schools, “teachers in low-end schools are rarely penalized for beating students or in fact humiliating their parents if they should come forward with any complaints” (Sobhy). As a result, the educational system structure in Egypt “contributes to student drop out, aversion to schooling, contentious unmanageable classrooms and sometimes counter-violence by students and parents” (Sobhy).
Therefore it is clear that in Egypt, the lack of efficiently-allocated resources has contributed to supporting a hostile educational structure. When considered next to the expected social roles and unemployment that face Egyptian women, the result is a major, complex obstacle to women’s equal access to education. The state has not efficiently used its resources to build enough schools with well-paid teachers, and, in turn, the education system has adapted its structure to attempt to solve these problems on its own. This adapted structure is widely corrupt, hostile, and can be extremely expensive. Since in Egypt “an educated boy can earn more than an educated girl,” and the inadequate social security system requires that families consider their future finances first, women have a disadvantage when it comes to schooling (Kugler 15).
The major barrier that presents itself to Egyptian girls and families is the cost of education. However, the actors that create this obstacle are many. The Egyptian Ministry of Education certainly plays a role in its poor allocation of resources. Teachers, in reaction to this, play a role by forcing the cost of education to be much higher than it would be otherwise. Finally, the pension system and overall financial status situation is partially to blame for the fact that many families live below the poverty line and cannot afford to send their daughters to school. These are large, systematic, and established problems that need to be addressed, but cannot be fixed overnight.