EGYPT: EDUCATION REFORM LAW PASSES, AMIDST PROTEST

UNCLAS CAIRO 002174 SIPDIS SENSITIVE SIPDIS STATE FOR NEA/ELA USAID FOR ANA E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KMPI KISL KPAO ECON EG SUBJECT: EGYPT: EDUCATION REFORM LAW PASSES, AMIDST PROTEST REF: CAIRO 1986 Sensitive but unclassified, please protect accordingly. ¶1. (SBU) Summary: On June 21, President Mubarak signed the "Teacher's Cadre" education law establishing a new system for hiring, training, and promoting teachers. The change is aimed at reforming Egypt's broken education system, where teachers are poorly paid and trained and not promoted according to their skills. Protests surrounded deliberation of the law, with some charging that the GOE is "privatizing" education. Penalties for private lessons, a widespread phenomenon that compensates teachers for low pay and parents for poor quality of education, were stripped before passage, leaving this problem to be solved later. USAID played a major role in assisting the Ministry of Education (MOE) to develop this law and continues to advise the MOE on education reform. The Cadre is a first step towards much needed education reform. End summary. New Education Law to Build Skilled Teacher Force -------------- --- ¶2. (U) On June 21, Egyptian President Mubarak signed the "Teacher's Cadre" law, establishing new rules for hiring, training, and promoting teachers through the secondary school level. The Cadre links salary increases to performance and establishes a six-tier system of teacher ranks from probationary to senior levels. This removes teachers from the civil service system, under which they were promoted based on seniority and the most senior positions were in administration, not teaching. In addition, a new Ministry of Education (MOE) "Teacher's Academy" will be created to provide training, licensing, and certification. The Cadre also includes support staff at schools (on the order of 50,000 employees),such as librarians and computer support technicians. On June 29, Mubarak agreed to include teachers in the Al-Azhar religious school system in the Cadre. ¶3. (U) There is a general consensus that the current education system is dysfunctional. Class size averages 43 students, and teachers generally focus efforts on their private students who pay for after school tutoring. Teachers aim to help students pass standardized exams, but do not instill critical thinking skills. Sixty percent of secondary students are in poor quality vocational, rather than general, education programs. Approximately 29 percent of Egyptians between the ages of 15 and 45 are illiterate; although this is a significant improvement in the past thirty years, there is a long way to go. ¶4. (SBU) The new law creates a system where teachers advance to higher ranks, and get paid commensurately, based on their teaching skills. This is an improvement over the former system in which, to get the top salaries, teachers had to move into adminstrative positions. The administrator-to-teacher ratio in the Egyptian school system is grossly out-of-whack, according to the Ministry of Education - Egypt has 821,043 teachers and 522,515 administrators, or about two administrators for every three teachers. Teachers who pass qualifying exams will be able to triple their salaries. They currently earn only between LE 292 ($51) and LE 808 ($142) per month, with a LE 512 ($90) yearly bonus; this will increase to between LE 543 ($95) and LE 1550 ($272),though the yearly bonus will be cancelled. (In comparison, an entry-level U.S. Embassy Cairo security guards earns about LE 1900, or $334, monthly base pay.) Financing for higher salaries, the new Teacher's Academy, and administration of the new Cadre comes from LE 1 billion ($175 million) put aside by Prime Minister Nazif for this program in August 2006. Loud Opposition Surrounds Deliberations -------------- ¶5. (SBU) Protests surrounded the debate and passage of this new law, both in the Shura Council (the lower house of parliament) and the People's Assembly (the upper house). In response to the protests, salary levels were raised over the initial proposal, support staff and technicians were included, and penalties for teachers engaged in after school tutoring were dropped. The GOE held firm against a Teacher's Syndicate protest, however, in which the group opposed giving control over licensing to the Teacher's Academy (vice the syndicate) and linking promotions to passing competency exams (rather than simply completing training courses). Dr. Reda Abou Serie, First Undersecretary for General Education at the MOE, told emboff June 17 that the Teacher's Syndicate protests were based on a desire to raise pay and benefits without imposing any requirements for improved teacher performance. ¶6. (SBU) An offshoot of the Teacher's Syndicate, the "Teachers Without Syndicate" movement, established itself in Alexandria in June. They oppose the reforms on the grounds that the Cadre does not "correspond with the President's electoral platform" nor meet teachers' "needs and ambitions." Hesham Shawqy, education reporter for the independent Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Yom, told emboff that this movement, and a similar one called the "Free Teachers," continues to oppose the Cadre because they see it as a privatization of the education system. He said that the socialist opposition Taggamu party supports the movements because it supports "anything against privatization," and pointed particularly to the new Teacher's Academy as a focus of the privatization accusation. (Comment: The charge of privatization continues to be a strong rallying point for any opposition to GOE policies, and invoking it appears to attract some support, even if the charge is spurious. End comment.) Private Tutoring Still A Concern -------------- ¶7. (U) The law as passed by the Shura Council included penalties for teachers who provide private tutoring outside the classroom, but the Education Committee of the People's Assembly removed these penalties before approving the law. Such private lessons are a fact of life in Egyptian schools, particularly as secondary school students approach the foreboding Thanawiyya Amma exam that determines their university futures. They are also a means of practical survival for teachers, providing them many times their income made teaching in schools. Sherif Omar, head of the Education Committee, told emboff that the penalties being discussed were not practical or enforceable, as after-school tutoring compensates teachers with extremely low salaries and parents whose children do not receive adequate education in school. Instead, he hoped that as teachers' salaries increase and the quality of in-class instruction improves, demand for outside lessons will subside. ¶8. (U) Dr. Abu Serie said that changing the university admissions process could also help lessen the pervasive private lesson culture. He said that the MOE is working with the Ministry of Higher Education to increase the number of private universities, and thus decreasing competition for public ones, and to change the entrance process for universities to include tests on specific subjects of study in addition to the Thanawiyya Amma. USAID Role -------------- ¶9. (SBU) USAID provided extensive technical assistance to the MOE to help them design the Teacher's Cadre and present it for passage in Parliament. USAID has also been working with the MOE on defining the role of the Teacher's Academy, and is helping to prepare the final proposal for the Minister to present for the Cabinet's approval. See reftel for more details on USAID's assistance in reforming the Egyptian education system. Comment -------------- ¶10. (SBU) The Teacher's Cadre is an initial attempt at sweeping education reform in a system that has failed to provide its graduates with the skills to compete in a modern economy. One measure of success will be the extent to which the government can eventually take on the private tutoring issue; if teachers are paid more and the quality of instruction goes up, then in theory the demand for such private instruction should lessen. Additionally, implementation of the Teacher's Academy and changes in curriculums must emphasize critical thinking skills over rote learning, in order to enhance graduates' skills and potentially pave the way for a freer culture of independent thought in Egypt. RICCIARDONE