First glimpse of Japanese schools in Egypt, families’ impressions

CAIRO – 28 July 2018: Around 100 Japanese schools will be built in Egypt in the framework of the governmental plan in 2018/2019 entitled “Egypt is launching”.

The schools will focus on teaching the Egyptian curriculum, while implementing some distinctive features of Japanese education, such as focusing on music, arts and collective games, as well as teaching cleanliness and self-reliance.

Enrollment in the schools started this year, and classes will begin in September with the 2018/2019 educational year.

Even though they are called “Japanese schools”, students will not learn the Japanese language in them. Instead, they will study the same exact curriculum as other international schools.

In addition, they teach Tukatsu to children, which is a Japanese educational activity that is based on developing both a sense of community and responsibility for the students towards society and school life.

Besides that, the activity works on achieving a balanced development between social, emotional and educational growth, as well as with developing a spirit of cooperation with others in order to cultivate balanced and integrated mindsets in the students.

The fees, however, will cost more than other international schools, the Ministry of Education has not yet given an exact figure but it is believed that the fees will exceed LE 5,000, with additional expenses for activities and such.

Khelloud Farouk, a mother of a child with Down Syndrome, said to Egypt Today that she applied forher child at a Japanese school, noting that she still does not know if the school will accept her son or not because of his situation, explaining that she found in the Japanese school a better opportunity forlearning.

Another father, Sameh Emara, said that he applied for his daughter at a Japanese school but was surprised by the large increase in expenses, noting that LE 10,000 is too much for school fees per year.

“Either they study in Arabic or English, I have no problem. The Japanese school is the only opportunity available to my daughter as there are no good schools near my home,” a mother said.

The schools will also require cooperation from the parents; they are expected to give 20 hours of their time to the school per year.

The classes and the schools themselves are modeled according to the Japanese style, with a focus on spacious rooms and individual desks for each student. In addition, there will be more than one board in each class, to help the teacher arrange students’ seating as they like.

This Japanese experiment will be introduced with 200 new schools; 100 of them are still under construction. The admission requirements are not going to be too different from other international schools; they ask for an application and state that priority will be given to the older child. Unlike other international schools, there will not be any exams for the parents.

According to the President of the Association of Private Schools, el-Mandooh el-Hussainy, the private education system in Egypt supports the public education system, as it tries to relieve the burden and pressure of the number of students, which is 18 million, including two million other students in private education.