Private school rejects pupil due to barber father

CAIRO - 22 December 2017: A mother complained that her son was rejected from a private school because of his father’s profession as a barber, despite their ability to pay the tuition fees, which range between LE 15,000-25,000 ($840-1,400).

During a phone call to the Akher al-Nahar program on al-Nahar TV channel on Friday, the mother, who refused to identify herself, revealed that the school rejected her son’s application, and when she asked for an explanation, she was told that the school set high standards for accepted pupils, with one being that both parents should be highly educated.

“I found out the real reason was my husband’s profession, who works as a barber,” the mother told the TV program.

Despite the Ministry of Education’s assertion that it refuses all forms of discrimination, such incidents are common in most of Egypt’s private schools, where they decide the fate of the student based upon the parents’ jobs, seeking white-collar workers, despite the ability of the parents to pay the fees and their obligation to follow up on the student’s education.

During a phone call to the program, Education Ministry spokesperson Ahmed Khairy pledged to consider the mother’s complaint, stressing the ministry’s anti-discrimination policy.

There are 7,385 private schools in Egypt with 2,032,679 students and 2,397 language schools with 749,275 students, while there are 45,279 governmental schools with 18,608,730 students, according the ministry’s statistics for the 2016-2017 academic year released in March 2017.