CAIRO, March 5, 2018 – Egypt's Minister of Education Tarek Shauki stressed on Monday the ministry's insistence on moving from the traditional educational system, which focuses on developing memorizing and apprehension skills, to a new one that gives priority to research and critical thinking. The minister's statements came during the signing ceremony of a co-operation protocol between the ministry, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank (EKB) and Misr El Kheir Foundation to launch the first scientific research contest for high school students including students of vocational education. Entitled" Young Researchers Contest'', the anticipated contest aims to qualify and further boost the high school students' performance nationwide. The contest would cover technology fields that can serve water, energy, food and agriculture sectors as well as medicine, biology, media, and entrepreneurship. A publicity campaign will be launched for the contest, outlining its regulations and phases. Best candidates would be selected based on certain criteria. After that, there will be specialised workshops to discuss the research papers before submission. Eventually, three papers would be selected to get scholarships at prestigious universities. Minister Shauki also underlined his recent visit to Japan where he noticed the country's focus on teaching students how to apply scientific research in solving their problems besides honing innovation and research skills starting from pre-school stage. Regarding the EKB, the minister explained that all the bank's information has been thoroughly reviewed. In a related context, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Misr El Kheir, Dr Ali Gomaa, remarked that the foundation's key role is to give due care to scientific research , which is the main gateway to the establishment of human civilisation. He, meanwhile, stated that qualified young people can bring Egypt back to its leading, pioneering position. The EKB is considered the largest online knowledge hub in Egypt that gives the public a free-of-charge access to a multitude of educational and scientific publications issued by major international publishing houses. The bank was officially launched in January 2016.
