After a three-day break grade 10 students resumed their final exams on 26 May. Out of 2,275 schools nationwide just 1,700 are equipped with the infrastructure needed for the computerised exam system. Some 97 per cent of students sitting exams in the fully equipped schools answered using their tablets. The remaining three per cent took their exams on paper as a result of technical problems. Among the problems encountered were students forgetting to bring their tablets, forgetting their personal codes, or else entering the codes of other students. On 27 May the State Council set 2 June as the date to hear a petition filed against Minister of Education Tarek Shawki and Prime Minister Mustafa Madbouli that seeks to ban the new computerised exams and return to the old system. The Ministry of Education has embarked on a radical overhaul of the curricula that emphasises digital learning and understanding over rote learning of facts. Students have access to online educational sites as the Egyptian Knowledge Bank and Encyclopaedia Britannica. Final Thanawaya Amma grades are now a composite of students' best results in six of the 12 exams they take in their three secondary school years. The highest six grades will be used to calculate a student's final grade. Students were particularly vociferous in their complaints about the two and a half hour mathematics exam which comprised 28 questions on algebra, geometry and trigonometry. Youssef Selim, a grade 10 student, said the allocated time was too short. “Questions were vague and very difficult and most students did not finish them all,” he said. Mohamed Hamdi complained not only of the difficulty of the questions but of unresolved technical issues. “It was a problem writing the answers with the tablet's pen. It was not responding and did not write and I failed to finish the exam because of this,” said Hamdi. Doaa Ahmed, a parent of a grade 10 student, believes the new system is a marked improvement. “It is a great development. Teachers are the ones who are complaining about the system to students and parents because it will end the phenomenon of private lessons. Give the new system and the minister the chance to prove its success. Parents and students should help the minister. The new system works in favour of students and depends on understanding rather than memorising. We have been complaining of the old system forever, and then when it changes we still complain,” she said. Nevine Shehata, also the mother of a grade 10 student, takes the opposite view. “Neither teachers nor students were trained in the new system. When we ask the teacher about anything we are always told ‘we don't know, we don't understand'. How does the ministry expect students to negotiate a system that even their teachers do not understand,” asked Shehata. Mohamed Hassouna, media coordinator at the Ministry of Education, said the technical glitches of the first week of exams had now been overcome and any remaining problems were individual ones. “Students and parents must get used to the new system which will improve over time. The new system has been introduced for the student's benefit,” he said. Grade 10 exams will finish on 1 June instead of the scheduled 30 May after English exams were postponed from 23 May to 1 June owing to unseasonably high temperatures.
