CAIRO - It takes Egyptian families a lot of time and effort to choose the kind of schooling they wish for their children. The parents' financial capacity and social status, as well as their vision of the aim of education usually determine their decision. The educational system in Egypt is somewhat confusing as it incorporates a variety that includes ostensibly free governmental schools, in which Arabic is the basic language of education, governmental experimental schools that teach science and mathematics in English, and Azharite schools, that offer religious-oriented education. In addition there are private language schools that give extra attention to foreign languages and recreational activities, as well as Francophone and Anglophone schools, that teach the syllabi of their respective countries. Once children reach the age of three or four, their parents start a search for a school that fulfils their needs and abilities. While the well off tend to pick up information from here and there about available schools, the low-income strata are left with the one option of governmental schools in their neighbourhood, whose fees are minimal. The call for free education was first initiated by Taha Hussein, the doyen of Arabic literature, when he was appointed to the education portfolio back in the early l950s. Hussein, who was blind, came from a poor background and yet was a PhD holder from the Sorbonne and propagated the motto that 'education is like air and water'. The l952 revolution that laid the foundation of socialist rule was keen to provide free education for a wide base of the public, which has been maintained by successive governments; very low fees are paid for textbooks at all stages of school education, as well as at university. Educational experts have been extremely concerned about the quality of education in Egypt, especially in the past two decades. They say quantity (that is the number of students) has come at the expense of quality. Student density in governmental schools averages today around 60 per class. It is even higher in certain districts, which adversely affects the educational process. In these circumstances teachers are not capable of doing their job properly nor are school children able to grasp what they are being taught. According to official figures about 60 per cent of the population enrol their children in governmental schools since they cannot afford otherwise. And yet, to overcome the inadequacies, parents are compelled to provide their children with extra private home tutoring or after-school classes, which cost them more than their budget can bear. Recent figures indicate that private tutoring costs Egyptians some LE l5 billion a year. Sociologists have noticed that there has been of late a growing tendency among the upper middle class to put their children in international schools, where the focus is given to building the character of students. As such they are provided with different skills that promote their freethinking and expression. The fees of these schools however begin with LE 20,000 to reach in some instances LE 65,000 a year and some of these schools refuse to be paid in Egyptian pounds accepting only hard currencies. According to Professor Hamed Ammar, who has been dubbed the father of educationalists in Egypt, the wide difference between the education available in governmental and in international schools has created a social and cultural gap that is dividing society into isolated communities. The upgrading of education is today one of the persisting public demands in the post revolution period. The incumbent Government has today raised the education allocation in the budget to LE3 billion, which is threefold last year's sum. Official figures show that expenditure on education in Egypt last year accounted for 3.4 per cent of the GDP against 5.4 per cent in oil-rich Arab countries, 7.1 per cent in Tunisia, 5.5 per cent in Syria and l3.3 per cent in Cuba, which is technically a developing country. (However, Cuba scores highly on the human development index [HDI], nearing the minimum level for developed county status).
