Egypt urgently needs to overhaul its education system and initiate reforms that will help match students’ skills to the labor market’s needs if it is to begin addressing unemployment, a think tank report released Wednesday says.
The report, issued by London-based think tank Chatham House, also says that the business community can play an essential role in funding training programs and lobbying the government to bring about genuine on-the-ground change in education that is often discussed, but rarely implemented.
Official estimates place unemployment at 12 percent of the population, while unofficial estimates say it is higher. With about half of the population under the age of 24, the availability of jobs will be essential to the stability of Egypt’s transition, of which education reform is a key pillar.
The Chatham House report was compiled as part of a series of workshops held over the past year in Egypt and London on various topics. The meetings have brought together a diverse range of stakeholders from civil society, government, academia, media, business and other sectors to discuss key issues.
Discussions are held under the Chatham House rule, which means participants can talk without their names being quoted outside the meeting rooms — a technique that aims to create open dialogue. Out of these discussions, reports are produced summarizing participants’ suggestions and policy recommendations.
Given that government finances are strained, and effective education reform has so far lacked sufficient political support, the business community could work together to fund and lobby for training and other programs that will help raise Egypt’s large, youthful population to the standards required for the job market, the “Education in Egypt” report suggests. More organized efforts in this regard would be a productive investment, given that businesses usually have to invest in training anyway, it goes on.
Egypt’s information and communications technology sector provides a successful model of skills development, participants said. A good skills base has helped to attract foreign investment from multinational companies, ranging from simple outsourcing to software development. Vodafone runs its global intranet from Cairo, for example, and hires its entire 6,000 base staff locally.
Training programs in the sector have been funded by a 1 percent levy on the gross income of all firms operating in the sector.
“While businesses rarely ask for additional taxes to be levied, several participants felt that it would be worthwhile for them to pay an additional levy for training, based on the information and communication technology sector’s successful model,” the report says.
Encouraging school curricula to teach core “soft skills,” which include communication and presentation skills, problem-solving and teamwork, would also make students more employable.
“As an employer, I would rather employ someone with average technical skills, but good soft skills, than the other way around,” one participant said.
Rote learning and memorization are the main methods of teaching in the majority of poorly funded, state-run technical schools, from which the majority of Egyptians graduate. One participant described technical education in Egypt as “little more than a certificate of eradication of illiteracy.”
Raising teachers’ salaries, which rarely amount to more than LE1,600 a month, is also essential in reforming the system. Low salaries mean that many teachers supplement their income with private tutoring outside of the classroom, leading to “a de facto privatization” of the system. This not only creates a strain on the financial resources of students and their families, but also means teachers are less encouraged to put their time and effort into classroom teaching.
Another key challenge is the over-centralization and politicization of the system, in which the Education Ministry exerts a large, and often repressive, amount of control over schools and teaching, according to the report. The role of security services is also a rarely discussed, though serious issue.
“The state security apparatus has penetrated the ministry right down to the level of individual schools — something rarely taken into consideration in policy advice from international organizations,” the report says.
Students taking their end-of-year 2011 state exams, for example, were instructed to write a letter thanking the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces for its role in the 25 January revolution. The ministry also provides learning materials, which often reflect the political leanings of the government in power.
Addressing the deficiencies in public sector education and the gap in standards between state schools and their private sector counterparts, from which the minority elites graduate, will be essential in achieving the social justice goals of the revolution, the reports suggest. The second report is a background paper on Egypt’s education system.
