EGYPT: Tests, teachers and anger
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Egyptian teachers don’t want to be tested.
Thousands of them have protested a government requirement that they pass an assessment exam to receive higher salaries. The average pay for teachers is $70 a month. Some see the new test as an attempt by the debt-ridden Egyptian Ministry of Education to avoid giving all the nation’s teachers a raise.
It has been a bad few months for the country’s education system. A spate of student suicides led to accusations that rich pupils were cheating by buying leaked copies of college entrance tests. The news came amid repeated complaints that Egypt is not producing enough qualified students to supply a growing economy and increased foreign investment.
The state is also considering forbidding teachers to earn extra money by tutoring outside class hours. The practice is widespread, but it has turned teachers into mercenaries. The government says moonlighting teachers put less effort into their public school lesson plans, forcing parents with limited incomes to pay tutoring fees if they want their children to succeed.
‘Decades of neglect have led to a dead end and even when the education ministry decided to restructure teachers’ salary schemes in hopes of curing the private lessons epidemic, it found itself caught in another pickle,’ wrote Rania Al Malky, editor of the Daily News Egypt. ‘Realizing that it can’t fund the 50 percent raise, the minister decided to impose a teachers’ assessment exam to ‘separate the wheat from the chaf.’ ‘
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
