Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi is expected to announce in July applying the new educational system from Cairo University, Education Minister Tarek Shawky said.
The Supreme Council of Pre-University Education approved late on Saturday a new project for the high school system, another system regulating kindergarten, the first stage of preparatory school starting September 2018.
The council further approved changing the names of the new technical education secondary schools to be schools of applied technology, according to a three-year system.
The new secondary school system will be divided into two sections: one focused more on arts and one focused more on science. The single national exam is being cancelled, and students will receive their final exams electronically on tablet devices provided to them by the ministry.
Shawky has developed several innovate initiatives, including the Egyptian Knowledge Bank, an online digital portal that includes educational, research, and cultural resources for a wide array of users, and Teacher First, a training programme for teachers on using ICT techniques in education, which is now available for Egyptian teachers.
Meanwhile, Shawky was first named education minister in February 2017. Since then, he has intended to implement dramatic changes in the Egyptian educational system; some have been admired, while others have caused anger and raised concerns among Egyptian parents.
In May, outrage was sparked over his bid to end the public experimental language schools and unify the educational system at all schools, making the curriculum to be only in the Arabic language until the preparatory stage (seventh year). However, he walked back that decision, stating that it will be applied next year at Arabic language and Japanese schools, as well as discussing the possibility of applying it to experimental schools in the 2020/2021 academic year.
As Egypt is looking forward to making critical changes in its public educational system as part of its 2030 Vision, it signed an agreement in April with the World Bank (WB) for a five-year loan worth $500m to improve education at Egyptian public schools.
The project aims at increasing access to quality kindergarten education for around 500,000 children, training 500,000 teachers and education officials, and providing 1.5 million students and teachers with digital learning resources, read a WB statement.
