The Ministry of Education announced on Monday that online trial exams for the first secondary stage have been halted after students from all over the country complained about the lagging server. Students were supposed to take a biology exam via an online server where they would use their electronic tablets to answer the questions. However, all over the country students and teachers complained that the system crashed, and the internet was slow which delayed the start time of the exam. In several schools in Cairo, the exam was delayed for two hours due to problems with the internet server where students should have accessed the questions on. The actual exams will be held toward the end of the semester. Monday's exam is the second trial test students took, as on Sunday, they sat down for an Arabic exam. However, the same problems were reported, which led several students to not take the exam. On Sunday, the Minister of Education, Tarek Shawky, said that the situation has been solved. On 18 March, the ministry announced that it will provide free internet cards to the students starting from Monday, as part of the ministry's plan to develop the educational process. Last week, over 708,000 tablets were distributed to first secondary students in about 2,000 schools in 20 governorates. Egypt signed an agreement in April 2018 with the World Bank for a five-year loan worth $500m to improve education in Egyptian public schools. One of these changes is to provide students with free tablets, in order to allow them to access their curricula, and to help them solve their exams through the tablets.
