CAIRO: One of the remaining vestiges of Egypt’s socialist era is free education from elementary school to university-level, but in the never-ending calls for education reform, rarely is this free model questioned.
It’s a political taboo to question free education in Egypt mainly because of its ideological association with the principals of the 1952 revolution.
Literary heavyweight and then education Minister Taha Hussein was the first to introduce the concept of state-funded education in 1950 with his now iconic statement that education was “like water and air, the right of every citizen.
After 1952 this concept was expanded to include all education right up until doctoral studies under the socialist ethos propagated by Gamal Abdel-Nasser. It even extended to students from other countries, Yasser Arafat and Saddam Hussein being two prominent alumni of Egyptian universities during that era.
Fatma H. Sayed, an academic at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy and author of the 2006 “Transforming Education in Egypt: Western Influence and Domestic Policy Reform says of the expansion in free education that “as ideologically virtuous as it sounds, it was not feasible, considering the very limited resources of the country. Consequently education received inadequate human and capital allocations that did not allow it to perform its developmental role.
Yet the discourse on education in Egypt traces its roots even before the fifties to the aftermath of the 1923 constitution, as Egypt – finally emerging from direct British rule – began a discourse on the constitution of its national identity and enshrined free education till the age of 12.
Ideology fueling free education
The full access to free education in the post 1952 era was “used as a means to reinforce national identity, the pan-Arab Nasserite socialist ideology and consolidate the republican military order. The enlarged role of the state required the expansion of state bureaucracy. Besides, the expulsion of expatriates from key positions conducting economic activities, increased the need for more nationals to fill those posts, Sayed told Daily News Egypt.
Nabil Abdel-Fatah a researcher at the sociology unit of Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies says that free education was expanded in the wake of the revolution to increase the base of support for the new rulers.
“The 1952 revolution expanded free education to expand the middle class, the main supporters of the revolution, specifically the lower middle class, he says.
“The main point of it was to move Egyptian society from ignorance to a more advanced stage, due to an ideology of progress in the semi-liberal age [of the 1920s], as it is ground work for advancement, he says.
What has it given us?
Yet as laudable as the desire to provide free education may be, the results seemed to be a rigid educational model, inflexible and unable to keep up with the times.
“The educational system became highly centralized and standardized on both secular and religious education levels, Sayed says. “As aspirations were raised, demand for education increased but school facilities and construction did not match demand, and the number of qualified teachers decreased after their relocation to other developing countries.
She points to the many elements to the deteriorating quality of education: a limited budget drained by military expenses, untargeted subsidies and curbed taxation.
The political implication of this, says Abdel-Fatah is that “free education continues to champion [and hence control] the docile, subservient, citizen, who will accept anything, politically, economically, religiously; the mind does not work.
Taking a leaf out of the bureaucratic state it was supposed to champion, education became as cumbersome and as inefficient as the rest of the state-controlled factors of production.
“Education suffered from the same ailments as the rigid, inflated, centralized and inefficient state-bureaucratic apparatus, Sayed adds. “After the euphoric promises of national dignity and prosperity, the defeat in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war put into question all of the internal and foreign policies of the state. Education was further marginalized and attention and resources were directed instead to rebuilding the army and revising foreign policy and strategies.
Reaching those that matter
Free education, however, did not mean that everyone took advantage of it. Abdu Mohammed Ahmed, 45, a construction worker and house cleaner grew up in Upper Egypt and instead of going to school as a child, he worked as a vendor on the railway platform.
“We used to have night classes in the village, but we didn’t bother going, there were more important things to do. I was eight and I had to work, he said. Ahmed can barely write his own name.
“Another cost of education often neglected by policy makers, continues Sayed, “is the opportunity cost of withdrawing students from the labor market. Knowing that the per-capita income in Egypt is very low, most families find it very difficult to support their children and send them to the labor market in order to at least cover their own expenses, or even support the family.
“Actually education-economists maintain that real free education would include exempting poor children from the costs of health insurance, and providing school meals, textbooks, stationary as well as increasing the efficiency and quality of education, she adds.
Private education, private tuition
Naturally alternatives exist, but only for those who can afford it. There is a plethora of private schools and universities in Egypt. People can go through their entire education without benefiting from state-funded schooling. However, it is the widespread prevalence of private tuition, whether in the state system or the private one that is the biggest indication that something is amiss, whether with regards to the quality or the salaried de-motivation of teachers.
Sayed says that establishing private education institutions has been a lucrative business in Egypt, “considering the increasing demand for education and the poor quality and limited capacity of public education.
Indeed, as she continues, ” most private sector activities are focused on establishing private educational institutions with very high fees (reaching up to thousands of US dollars) that do not cater for lower income groups.
“What happened was that the education system itself was not kept up to speed, which led to private lessons that showed the disparity in inequity of wealth and the transformation of education into a rote system, Abdel-Fatah says. “The free system and private lessons created the ‘locked-up’ mind. Bad education leads to fundamentalism and crime.
As many education experts have repeatedly pointed out, education is not completely cost-free for students and their families.
“In fact the equivalent of around 10 percent of the national education budget is spent annually on private tutoring by Egyptian families, says Sayed.
The degree of absurdity which private lessons have reached now means that even children in kindergarten cannot avoid it.
Yasmine El Baghdady, a former kindergarten teacher at a private school, spoke of how even kindergarten students aged four and five were getting tutored.
“Some of my colleagues would give lessons to some of the children whose mothers don’t have time to spend with them. It’s not as advanced as higher-grade students of course; they usually help them with their homework and the lessons of the day, she says.
Making it work
Whatever solutions the debate on educational reform lead to, it is unlikely to encompass a proposal which would spell the end of the free model, nor should it necessarily do so.
“Free education has been ingrained in the minds of the masses as a basic right that extends to university and postdoctoral levels. The current Egyptian Constitution dedicates at least five articles to free education and social equity, which are two, repeatedly associated principles, Sayed says.
For Abd
el-Fatah, there is a dire need to recreate the educational system to build it on a platform of rational thought, championing the critical mind and respecting freedom of expression.
Sayed poses a question that the government has up to now shied away from confronting mainly because, as she says, “the state cannot afford to renounce its central role in development for political reasons: “Is it an equitable redistribution of wealth to provide free education to the rich and poor equally at the expense of taxpayers and public funds?
Striking the balance between “the state’s commitment to ‘real’ free quality education at all levels, and a more careful evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of such investments that should be carefully targeted is inevitably the biggest challenge to Egypt’s development.
