The selling of thanaweya aama (national secondary school final examination) papers rightly made headline news in last week's local press. The prosecutor-general is directly overseeing the investigation and eight suspects have already been detained. Unfortunately, the incident is merely one symptom of an affliction that is steadily debilitating the nation. If, indeed, the daughter of an MP (in Upper Egypt's Abu Qurqas constituency), together with a suspect in the Minya provincial Education Administration, are the main culprits behind the leaked papers, which were reportedly sold for LE800 each, then the case is one more example of the rampant corruption that disfigures our public life. That this will come as no surprise lies at the heart of the problem. When in the course of investigations it was revealed that this practice has been going on for years, under the very nose of the Education Ministry's employees, was anyone really shocked? No. Similarly, when Al-Dostour daily newspaper revealed last week that special, ad hoc thanaweya aama committees had been created to assess the exams of the children of senior officials sitting the exam in Minya no one found the revelations a bombshell. All education systems include a juncture that is of paramount importance to students. In Egypt it's the thanaweya aama, a nightmare that torments hundreds of thousands of Egyptian households every year. The examination is central to the lives of millions of students who aspire to a college education. The results of the exam will determine the direction of the students' future, whether or not they will be accepted by one of the top national universities and the faculties to which they can apply. In a country where social mobility has all but atrophied, the thanaweya aama, for better or worse, continues to be perceived as a passport to a better life, the key to opening the door to a comfortable, middle-class existence. Incidents of suicide are not uncommon for those who fail the exam. Even those who are successful all too often find that they have committed a kind of financial suicide since their families will have paid for private lessons, an essential part of the thanaweya aama package and again something that raises no eyebrows among a public that has been forced to accept that private, let alone public, schooling will not be enough to guarantee the required marks. To make matters worse it is common for students to find they have wasted a year's work, and their families untold pounds, when the exams arrive riddled with mistakes, printed unclearly or with impossibly difficult questions. But the public knows that Egypt's educational system collapsed many years ago: what remains is a decomposed corpse that yields nothing worthy of meaning and to the stench of which we have become thoroughly desensitised. The revelation of leaked thanaweya aama exams is but part and parcel of a seemingly endless collection of dead and dying institutions. Earlier this week members of parliament brought to attention the recurrent theft of electrical cables from the High Dam, warning that such crimes could see "Egypt drown within 24 hours". The theft of examination papers, and of cables that control the workings of the High Dam, constitute serious breaches of national security. They must be treated as such. Doing so may not halt the spread of the rot but failure to do so means we must pronounce the body politic dead.
