Bassera, the Egyptian centre for research and public opinion, estimated that the private sector contributed to developing the Egyptian education system with 9% in funding over the past 10 years.
During the second day of the Social Responsibility Forum on Wednesday, Magid Osman, the founder and CEO of Bassera, said the number of students in Egypt currently exceeds 19 million, equal to the population of an entire country.
Osman explained that the Egyptian government allocated EGP 33bn in the budget for fiscal year (FY) 2017/2016 to building 200 apartments for low-income households, and recommended allocating EGP 1m from this to buying educational tablets for students and granting scholarships in different educational fields.
“The Egyptian government increases the budget for government employees’ income by EGP 100bn every year, and if this amount is provided the country can build around 500,000 schools every year and solve problems related to education,” Osman added.
Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) chairperson Abo Bakr Al-Gendy said the most important problem facing Egypt is the high population growth.
“The Egyptian population reached 90.8m this year and the economic growth rate should be triple the population growth for the sake of improving lives [individual income level],” said Al-Gendy.
“The unemployment rate during 2015 was 12.8%, which represents around 2.5 million of the whole population and the illiteracy rate reached 49%,” he added.
Deputy Minister of Education Ahmed Al-Gyoshy said there is a definite lack in technical education skills in Egypt and there is a dire need for professional industrial training.
“Egypt has 2 million students in technical education programmes and only 30,000 obtain professional training,” Al-Gyoshy added.
“Egyptian industrial factories are neglecting technical education when technical education is needed to determine market needs from the technical field,” Al-Gyoshy told Daily News Egypt.
“The ministry has already started seeking to improve the level of technical education and is preparing curriculum according to international criteria to be offered in the technical schools and it will be finished within the first six months of the year,” said Al-Gyoshy.
He added that the budget has allocated EGP 9m for developing technical schools per year and the ministry provides units in every governorate to help students reach the work market.
Al-Gyoshy concluded by demanding that companies and civil society cooperate in the technical education system.
