Education in Egypt

In a previous post (October 9), I have discussed the poor quality of education in the Arab world and its deterioration by comparison to many other countries, world wide. However, recently there has been an encouraging announcement issued through the Egyptian Ministry of Education(Al Masry Al Yom, 11/30/09). It stated that the Egyptian government will allocate 350 million Egyptian pounds to provide modern educational equipments to different secondary schools (high schools) over a certain period of time. Some of the funds will be used to train teachers to operate the new equipments, and to develop new curricula based on new technologies. An amount of 50 million pounds will be allocated for the first stage of the program.

Such a program, if successful, will launch young Egyptians into the 21st century world of technology.

The emphasis on secondary education only, is however, short sighted. The application of modern technology should be part of the educational curricula at all levels. The Egyptian government should provide more funding to support such a worthwhile project.

Al Masry Al Yom (11/16/09) reported that 85% of the Egyptian population uses cellular phones. This means that there are 53.4 million people using cellular phones. It is expected that the number will increase to 65 million people, soon!

I am of the opinion that the Egyptian government should tax cellular phone users the amount of one Egyptian pound per month. If implemented, the government will collect 50 million pounds in taxes per month, and over 600,000 million pounds per year. The money can then be used to train more teachers and equip more schools with modern technology - a big step towards enhancing the quality of education that Egypt is in dreadful need.