Education in Egypt

Egypt has the largest overall education system in the Middle East and North Africa and it has grown rapidly since the early 1990s. In recent years the Government of Egypt has accorded even greater priority in improving the education system. According to the Human Development Index (HDI), Egypt is ranked 108 in the HDI, and 9 in the lowest 10 HDI countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa, in 2014. With the help of the World Bank and other multilateral organizations Egypt aims to increase access in early childhood to care and education and the inclusion of ICT at all levels of education, especially at the tertiary level. The government is responsible for offering free education at all levels. The current overall expenditure on education is about 12.6 percent as of 2007. Investment in education as a percentage of GDP rose to 4.8 in 2005 but then fell to 3.7 in 2007. The Ministry of education is also tackling with a number of issues: trying to move from a highly centralized system to offering more autonomy to individual institutions, thereby increasing accountability. The personnel management in the education also needs to be overhauled and teachers should be hired on merit with salaries attached to the performance.

The public education system in Egypt consists of three levels: the basic education stage for 4–14 years old: kindergarten for two years followed by primary school for six years and preparatory school (ISCED Level 2) for three years. Then, the secondary school(ISCED Level 3) stage is for three years, for ages 15 to 17, followed by the tertiary level. Education is made compulsory for 9 academic years between the ages of 4 and 14. Moreover, all levels of education are free within any government run schools. According to the World Bank, there are great differences in educational attainment of the rich and the poor, also known as the "wealth gap." Although the median years of school completed by the rich and the poor is only one or two years but the wealth gap reaches as high as nine or ten years. In the case of Egypt, the wealth gap was a modest 3 years in the mid-1990s. Overall, the composite education Index in the MENA Flagship Report: The Road Not Traveled showed promising results of the people of singers relative educational achievements. Of the 14 MENA countries analyzed, Egypt achieved the education which has been really bad over the years. There has been a lot of attacks in their schools.

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