Reforming Egypt's education system may be the most controversial issue on the agenda of the ruling party's first annual conference, reports Gamal Essam El-Din Educational reform will figure prominently on the agenda of the ruling National Democratic Party's (NDP) first annual conference, which is set to take place on 27-28 September. The emphasis being placed on the sector stems not only from how critical education is to Egypt's ongoing efforts to modernise, but also has quite a lot to do with an internal party debate over whether or not the government should take radical steps -- like the phasing out of education subsidies -- in its quest for across the board reform. Adding fuel to the fire is the public's sensitivity about foreign participation in education reform. For months, several opposition parties have been decrying the increasing role of USAID (US Agency for International Development) in the education sector. The main gripe centres around whether the US is flexing its monetary muscle in an attempt to purge Egyptian school curricula of its Islamic flavour, and promote Western values at the expense of religious teachings. Addressing the party's younger members in Alexandria on 18 June, NDP Secretary-General Safwat El-Sherif said, "nobody on earth can dictate what Egypt should do to its educational curricula and religious discourse." On 24 June, Gamal Mubarak, the 39-year-old son of President Hosni Mubarak and the chairman of the NDP's influential Policy Secretariat, said that the state is committed to providing citizens with free education. He added, however, that, "greater efforts are being exerted to broaden the scope of private funding of education, and to relieve the state budget of major financial burdens." Mubarak revealed that the Policy Secretariat's education committee has put together several reports on educational reform, which "primarily focus on decentralising basic education services and modernising education systems over a period of five years." One of the reports says that despite five decades of efforts aimed at providing citizens with equal educational opportunities, the quality of education is not at the requisite level. The report laments that Egypt remains far behind many other countries when it comes to per capita spending on education. "In spite of the fact that budgetary allocations to the education sector have been on the increase over the last 20 years," says the report, "expenditures on education in Egypt stand at $129.6 per student per year, compared to $289.5 in Tunisia, $1,337.6 in Saudi Arabia, $4,763.4 in America, and $6,959.8 in Japan." The report recommends that the focus of the next phase of educational reform be on promoting decentralisation, upgrading the quality of education, and strengthening the infrastructure of educational facilities. To attain these objectives, the committee recommends that an independent national agency be set up to oversee educational curricula and services in both the public and Islamic (Azharite) systems. At next month's conference, NDP officials will also be dealing with the issue of America's funding of the educational sector. Education Minister Hussein Kamel Bahaaedddin's May US tour has helped throw the issue into sharp focus. Bahaaeddin was criticised by some for towing the American line, and by others for not taking even more of the Americans' advice. A senior USAID official told Al-Ahram Weekly that Bahaaeddin met with senior US education officials, including US Secretary of Education Rod Paige, USAID's Education Administrator Andrew Matsios, and Elizabeth Cheney, the 39-year-old daughter of US Vice President Dick Cheney, and the deputy assistant secretary of state for the Near East. Cheney, in particular, is in charge of implementing a central part of the US Middle East Partnership Initiative. The announcements made by Cheney on the sidelines of last month's Davos economic conference in Jordan catalysed quite a bit of controversy in Egypt and the Arab world. Cheney said Washington wants to launch a series of educational pilot projects supporting girls' literacy programmes in the Arab world, and promoting a new curriculum devoid of Islamic fundamentalism. These objectives were publicly championed by senior US officials like Secretary of State Colin Powell and the State Department's director of policy planning, Richard Haas. USAID officials in Egypt, however, insist that amending Egyptian educational curricula is none of their business. US Ambassador to Egypt David Welch also strongly denied that the US is trying to change the curriculum, or that it wants to change cultural and religious values. "Tackling Egyptian school curricula is the exclusive preserve of the Egyptian Education Ministry and government," a senior USAID official told the Weekly. The official said the agency has been focussing on three areas: constructing schools (1,950 have already been built), providing literacy and life-skills training, and improving girls' enrollments in rural Egypt. The official said the agency has contributed $764 million towards Egypt's educational needs since 1975, with most of the money allocations determined according to the needs of the Ministry of Education. "The Egyptian government asked that a greater part (around $200 million) of USAID's annual assistance to Egypt between 2000 and 2009 be allocated to the education sector," the USAID official said. In the meantime, opposition and independent parties, as well as several parliamentary deputies, have been vociferously suggesting that USAID's focus on rural areas in recent years stems from a belief that these areas, especially in Upper Egypt, have long been fertile grounds for extremist and intolerant ideas. They also allege that USAID conditions the money it provides for Egypt's educational sector on the monitoring of curricula for anti-Semitic or Islamic fundamentalist ideas. One MP told the Weekly that, "they want to amend the curricula in a way that will promote the ideals of the three monotheistic religions (Islam, Christianity and Judaism), rather than just Islam, while highlighting Western civilisation's role in human progress." Some MPs have also been claiming that those Egyptian teachers who have travelled to America on USAID grants have merely been indoctrinated in American values and teaching methodologies. "When they get back home, these teachers will be required to restructure the Islamic values and traditions they teach in an American way," alleged one MP. USAID officials described these allegations as entirely unfounded. Egyptian teachers also often train in Europe and other places, they argued, and "the training they receive in the US is not concerned with changing the curriculum, but rather with improving critical-thinking approaches to education, improving English language skills, introducing better matching of educational preparation with market demands for skills and learning student-centred teaching methodologies." In fact, a master teacher exchange programme has trained thousands of Egyptian master teachers in the US, who are now qualified to help train thousands of other local teachers. At least one paper -- Akhbar Al-Yom -- actually criticised Bahaaeddin for failing to adopt radical suggestions proposed by the Americans. One of these involves allowing greater private funding for school facilities, and larger roles for non governmental organisations at all levels of basic education.
