CAIRO – 5 June 2018: MP Magda Nasr of the Parliament’s Education Committee supported Monday a proposal presented earlier by Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel Aal to deprive students who fail class from education subsidies.
Nasr said that some students are indifferent to failure, adding that some of them deliberately fail the tests in order to benefit for a longer time from the medical subsidy. Abdel Aal’s proposal includes university and school students.
In an interview with Egypt Today, Nasr said the proposal aims to stop wasting public money by directing the subsidies for those who do not deserve it. Nasr said subsidies should be lifted if a student fails tests for the second time.
File - MP Magda Nasr
Salah Fawzi, a constitutional law professor, said that the state roughly spends from LE 17,000 ($951) to LE 25,000 ($1,398) annually on each student of various faculties.
MP Mostafa Bakri of the Parliament's Media, Culture and Antiquities Committee supported Nasr’s suggestion that calls for not depriving students from subsidies if they fail tests for the first time.
Warning of probable consequences, MP Mohamed Fouad of the Parliament’s Budget and Planning Committee said that the proposal should be studied further, and the profit that would be gained as a result of applying the decision should be estimated. He said that in case it is found that the decision’s profit will not be worthy, then it is better not to cause people to worry.
In April, 2017, MP Fayez Barakat of the Education and Scientific Research Committee suggested that a student who fails a test without an excuse should pay LE 12,000 ($671) to the state in order to have the chance to take class again.
Earlier in May, Head of the Finance Ministry’s State Budget Sector Mohamed Abdel Fatah said that allocations for health and education sectors did not see a reduction in the new budget for fiscal year 2018/19.
He said that allocations for both fields are meeting the constitution's requirement, saying that allocations for the health and pre-university education sectors in the new budget are valued at LE 81 billion and LE 88.7 billion, respectively.
In his speech to the nation at the House of Representatives after swearing in for a second term in presidency, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said that education, health, and culture will come on top of his priorities via launching a bunch of great national projects and programs to upgrade Egyptians’ abilities.
Sisi always gave directives to officials to continue efforts of developing basic and higher education in a bid to link education with labor market needs.
In January, Sisi announced that the development of education in Egypt requires LE 220 billion, stressing that young people are the backbone of the country. The Ministry of Education launched a new system set to begin in September and it will be compulsory in KG1, KG2 and first grade classes in all private and public schools.
The new system will cancel the Primary Education Certificate and the traditional Thanaweya Amma (high school) system and will be replaced with a new secondary education system based upon the Grade Point Average (GPA), starting from the school year 2018-2019.
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