No preparatory year added after junior high: Cabinet Media Centre

CAIRO – 4 January 2019: The Egyptian Cabinet’s Media Center revealed that reports regarding an additional school year after junior high are false.

The Media Center announced that the Ministry of Education denied the news, asserting that such rumours are designed to cause dismay between students and parents.

How is Egytp’s new education system designed?

Egypt's new education system is designed to discover talents and build leaders through teaching them key characteristics, revealed Egyptian Minister of Higher Education Khaled Abdelghafar and Egyptian Minister of Education Tarek Shawky had revealed previously during a session titled, “How do we build future leaders?". The session comes during the third day of the second edition of the World Youth Forum held in November 2018.

"No two students will take the same subjects. Each student will take the subjects that are suitable for their talents; there will be compulsory courses and electives. The electives will prepare the student for what comes next for them," Shawky revealed.

The minister explained that the new education system is designed to discover talents early on so that the school and teachers can work to develop them as appropriate, explained Shawky.

The current system, he explained, does not take into account the fact that students have different talents and abilities, and measures their success in a basic way. The new system will fix this issue and build on individual’s abilities.

“We want to find these talents early on so we can work on it," Shawky explained.

“For those who are asking why we are changing the educational system,” Shawky said, “we are doing this because the old educational system did not really discover the talents of people. Some people have talents that are related to science but some have talents in the arts and music.”

“Developing education in Egypt was a dream and now it is coming true,” Shawky stated.

The educational system will also take into account the changes that will happen to society.

In similar vein, Abdelghafar explained that the program they have built that strategies the development of education in Egypt has been drawn through studies by experts. The developments in the education program is also built to align with Egypt's 2030 Agenda.

“Education is essential in building leadership, it is not simply a genetic trait,” Abdelghafar said.