Some years ago, there was a campaign in the UK with the title: "Nobody Forgets a Good Teacher." It was a very good slogan to promote the teaching career. That is true for a good student, but what should a good education deliver to the majority of learners? The answer is simple: quality education, the sort that any student feels and appreciates. As a result, every pupil should be prepared for life as an upstanding member of the community, not just on leaving primary or preparatory school, but also secondary school, university and the work environment. How does that relate to the Egyptian education system? For over two decades, the Egyptian Ministry of Education has promulgated a series of steps and propagated a myriad of programmes to deliver a better education for all. But despite the good intention, the outcome was almost nil, and the education programmes failed to satisfy the needs and aspirations of students and parents. Let's consider the pre-Higher Education level. First of all, let's admit that the Egyptian education system and policies have gone very askew of late. Yes, Egypt has the largest education system in the Middle East. The Ministry of Education is trying hard to ensure an education of quality for all and develop a knowledgeable society. There are three centres that help the ministry make decisions concerning the education process. They are: the National Centre of Curricula Development, the National Centre for Education Research, and the National Centre for Examinations and Educational Evaluation. But it seems that these centres need an overall reform to do a good job. All that these centres were able to do since their inception was in futility. To take just a few examples: the scrapping of the six grade of the Basic Education and its recent reinstatement, the sham purgation of syllabi, only by cutting textbooks short, irrespective of contents, and lately, the cancellation of the Basic Education Completion Certificate. Parents could ruefully watch many of their children upgraded from one year to another and many of them end up almost illiterate. They could hardly read and write properly. And many of these have just finished the preparatory stage, the one preceding high school level, or the so-called secondary education. At this stage, the problems have become harder to tackle. The majority of students just go to school at the first grade level (or year); they just play truants at the second and third year as they sit at home for private tutoring. Hence the school has proved a complete failure there. I speak here of pupils in the public as well as the private schools. And the students were not immune to the experimentation administered by the Ministry's three centres. The last strokes were considering some subjects on the curriculum as redundant and were, therefore, left to the discretion of students to choose to study: I mean, geology and philosophy as they are no longer added to the sum total of marks garnered by a student to take him to university. Before this happened the second year of the secondary education was split from the third year, which was formerly part and parcel of the Certificate of General Secondary Education (Thanawiya Amma), the famous and formidable boogey for Egyptian pupils and the trauma for their families. To cut a long story short, the necessity for actual and true reform of the Egyptian education system is still persistent. The education system is still awaiting a revolution. Just as the Ministry has done its role to improve the condition of teachers, it is the role of teachers to deliver a better education and improve their performance. Yes, the challenges are great, but pessimists need not apply. It is a matter of a happy or miserable life for all students. Education as W. B. Yeats said: "is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." It is a question of "to be or not to be."
