Egypt & Resources:
Low teacher salaries
The second category of obstacles facing women’s access to quality education in Egypt is resources. Egyptian schools lack the necessary resources from the Egyptian government to become high quality. Though Egypt has focused on, and for the most part achieved, a high quantity of Egyptian children in attendance of pre-primary and primary school, the quality of this education and higher education has suffered. The secretary general of the Supreme Council of Universities stated in one interview that the Egyptian government’s main educational goal was “providing access to higher education[… and that they are] in the phase of access rather than the phase of quality” (Ghazal 106).
This phase has been largely successful, as in 2013, 99.29 percent of all primary-age students were enrolled in primary school, though as previously discussed these figures decline with level of education (UIS). Therefore the problem for Egyptian schools is state resources for the improvement of the curricula and classroom resources, as the Egyptian government is still focused on expanding access rather than quality. Since 2005, this has created an even greater strain on Egypt’s dwindling funds as the school-age population has risen, and the unit costs of providing education at the primary and secondary level have also increased (Gershberg 12). Egypt’s public spending on education is relatively high compared to other nations with similar incomes, but this spending is largely inefficient, which has left Egyptian schools with major flaws (Gershberg 1). One such issue is textbook spending, which in 2005 was 63 percent of the Egyptian Ministry of Education’s nonwage spending, about 28 percent of which was for reprints of old textbooks (Gershberg 13). Another problem is lack of school facilities coupled with increasing school populations, creating class densities over 80 or more students (Sobhy). Furthermore, Egypt has “attempted to cope with this through the institution of multiple shift schools, whereby two or three school populations use the same building at different times of the day,” which means that teachers and students get only four to five hours in the classroom per school day (Sobhy). Between 2001 and 2006, schools that operated in shifts represented 56.7 percent of primary schools (Egypt 58). This is totally counterproductive to effective teaching. Egypt is also guilty of overstaffing these inefficient and overcrowded schools by hiring teachers at a higher rate than enrollment growth (Gershberg 11). All of these resource problems contribute to Egypt’s low level of quality in public education, which creates an economic obstacle for women to access a quality, expensive, private education. Considered in the context of finances as the major family priority, and therefore the sons’ schooling rather than the daughters’, an expensive education is a major problem.
The largest count of inefficient expenditure in Egypt is teachers’ salaries. Many teachers in Egypt are hired “on precarious contracts and paid real wages below poverty line estimates” which has created the widespread notion of teachers’ “right” to increase their incomes privately through tutoring (Sobhy). Over 60 percent of household spending on education in Egypt is allocated towards this private tutoring (UNESCO). The lack of resources for teachers’ fair salaries therefore creates a hostile educational structure, which discriminates based on wealth.