Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madboul held a meeting with top officials on Sunday to discuss ways of cooperation with Japan in technical education, through the formal Japanese educational system KOSEN. This comes in continuation of the existing joint cooperation between the two sides in terms of the experiment of the establishment of Japanese schools and universities in Egypt, a cabinet statement read. The government attaches great importance to technology education, Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli said during the meeting. Launched in 1962, the Japanese "KOSEN" formal education system sought to provide students with in-depth technical knowledge and skills, and thereby cultivating the abilities required in their professional fields. Minister of Communications and Information Technology Amr Talaat, Presidential Adviser for National Security Faiza Aboul-Naga, former minister of higher education Hani Helal, and Secretary General of the Education Development Fund Ahmed Al-Hayawi attended the meeting. Egypt now has three specialized technological universities, and several more are still under construction nationwide, the premier noted. The meeting discussed lessons learned from other countries' experience in applying the KOSEN program, especially in Thailand and Vietnam, Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad said in a statement. It also tackled the mechanisms of future cooperation with Japan to apply the KOSEN program in Egypt, given the country's need of highly skillful workers. The first 12 KOSEN colleges were founded in 1962, and the number increased to 43 by 1965 in response to a strong demand from the industrial sector to foster engineers who sustained the high Japanese economic growth in the wake of World War II.
