Minister of Education Tarek Shawky told Daily News Egypt that his ministry will conduct interviews to select 1,500 teachers for Egypt's Japanese schools on 4 June. The application period for students will be open a year after that. Shawky explained that the Japanese schools will study the multidisciplinary curricula for the primary stage in Arabic, just like public schools. He noted that the first Arabic-language citation index in the world will be ready in 2020, which will move Egypt into the knowledge economy stage. It will also add Arabic citations to the High Speed Science Network for researchers in Egypt and the 22 member countries of the League of Arab States. The new citation index will provide an Arabic interface for the High Speed Science Network, providing access to information from journals published in Arabic, thus making access to Arabic content easier and linking it to more than 1.4bn references worldwide. “As we have bought most foreign research over the past years, the West will buy our Arab research. Therefore, our research will be available to those who do not read Arabic. Russia and China preceded Egypt in implementing this idea,” Shawky said. The minister of education pointed out that the index confirms to all countries that Egypt is superior in science, chemistry, and mathematics, and therefore will improve Egypt's ranking in education, and its universities' rankings in scientific research. He pointed out that Egypt will teach students scientific research and how research works from childhood in the new education system given that Egypt needs competitive youth in the field of knowledge. The Ministry of Education is implementing a new educational system at the kindergarten and first grade levels in September 2018. The secondary school system is also being modified to transform the evaluation system into a cumulative system and to abolish the unified national exam. Students enrolling in the first secondary year next year will receive a tablet through which they will be examined. Shawky stressed that the state will grant tablets free of charge to students of those schools in the first year and the state has borne large sums to develop the system, refusing to disclose the amounts.
