VZCZCXYZ0040
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHEG #2174/01 1931444
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 121444Z JUL 07
FM AMEMBASSY CAIRO
TO SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6118

UNCLAS CAIRO 002174 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ELA 
USAID FOR ANA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KMPI KISL KPAO ECON EG
SUBJECT: EGYPT: EDUCATION REFORM LAW PASSES, AMIDST PROTEST 
 
REF: CAIRO 1986 
 
Sensitive but unclassified, please protect accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) Summary: On June 21, President Mubarak signed the 
"Teacher's Cadre" education law establishing a new system for 
hiring, training, and promoting teachers.  The change is 
aimed at reforming Egypt's broken education system, where 
teachers are poorly paid and trained and not promoted 
according to their skills.  Protests surrounded deliberation 
of the law, with some charging that the GOE is "privatizing" 
education.  Penalties for private lessons, a widespread 
phenomenon that compensates teachers for low pay and parents 
for poor quality of education, were stripped before passage, 
leaving this problem to be solved later.  USAID played a 
major role in assisting the Ministry of Education (MOE) to 
develop this law and continues to advise the MOE on education 
reform.  The Cadre is a first step towards much needed 
education reform.  End summary. 
 
New Education Law to Build Skilled Teacher Force 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶2. (U) On June 21, Egyptian President Mubarak signed the 
"Teacher's Cadre" law, establishing new rules for hiring, 
training, and promoting teachers through the secondary school 
level.  The Cadre links salary increases to performance and 
establishes a six-tier system of teacher ranks from 
probationary to senior levels.  This removes teachers from 
the civil service system, under which they were promoted 
based on seniority and the most senior positions were in 
administration, not teaching.  In addition, a new Ministry of 
Education (MOE) "Teacher's Academy" will be created to 
provide training, licensing, and certification.  The Cadre 
also includes support staff at schools (on the order of 
50,000 employees), such as librarians and computer support 
technicians.  On June 29, Mubarak agreed to include teachers 
in the Al-Azhar religious school system in the Cadre. 
 
¶3. (U) There is a general consensus that the current 
education system is dysfunctional.  Class size averages 43 
students, and teachers generally focus efforts on their 
private students who pay for after school tutoring.  Teachers 
aim to help students pass standardized exams, but do not 
instill critical thinking skills.  Sixty percent of secondary 
students are in poor quality vocational, rather than general, 
education programs.  Approximately 29 percent of Egyptians 
between the ages of 15 and 45 are illiterate; although this 
is a significant improvement in the past thirty years, there 
is a long way to go. 
 
¶4. (SBU) The new law creates a system where teachers advance 
to higher ranks, and get paid commensurately, based on their 
teaching skills.  This is an improvement over the former 
system in which, to get the top salaries, teachers had to 
move into adminstrative positions.  The 
administrator-to-teacher ratio in the Egyptian school system 
is grossly out-of-whack, according to the Ministry of 
Education - Egypt has 821,043 teachers and 522,515 
administrators, or about two administrators for every three 
teachers.  Teachers who pass qualifying exams will be able to 
triple their salaries.  They currently earn only between LE 
292 ($51) and LE 808 ($142) per month, with a LE 512 ($90) 
yearly bonus; this will increase to between LE 543 ($95) and 
LE 1550 ($272), though the yearly bonus will be cancelled. 
(In comparison, an entry-level U.S. Embassy Cairo security 
guards earns about LE 1900, or $334, monthly base pay.) 
Financing for higher salaries, the new Teacher's Academy, and 
administration of the new Cadre comes from LE 1 billion ($175 
million) put aside by Prime Minister Nazif for this program 
in August 2006. 
 
Loud Opposition Surrounds Deliberations 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Protests surrounded the debate and passage of this 
new law, both in the Shura Council (the lower house of 
parliament) and the People's Assembly (the upper house).  In 
response to the protests, salary levels were raised over the 
initial proposal, support staff and technicians were 
included, and penalties for teachers engaged in after school 
tutoring were dropped.  The GOE held firm against a Teacher's 
Syndicate protest, however, in which the group opposed giving 
control over licensing to the Teacher's Academy (vice the 
syndicate) and linking promotions to passing competency exams 
(rather than simply completing training courses).  Dr. Reda 
Abou Serie, First Undersecretary for General Education at the 
MOE, told emboff June 17 that the Teacher's Syndicate 
protests were based on a desire to raise pay and benefits 
without imposing any requirements for improved teacher 
performance. 
 
¶6. (SBU) An offshoot of the Teacher's Syndicate, the 
"Teachers Without Syndicate" movement, established itself in 
Alexandria in June.  They oppose the reforms on the grounds 
that the Cadre does not "correspond with the President's 
electoral platform" nor meet teachers' "needs and ambitions." 
 Hesham Shawqy, education reporter for the independent 
Egyptian daily Al Masry Al Yom, told emboff that this 
movement, and a similar one called the "Free Teachers," 
continues to oppose the Cadre because they see it as a 
privatization of the education system.  He said that the 
socialist opposition Taggamu party supports the movements 
because it supports "anything against privatization," and 
pointed particularly to the new Teacher's Academy as a focus 
of the privatization accusation.  (Comment: The charge of 
privatization continues to be a strong rallying point for any 
opposition to GOE policies, and invoking it appears to 
attract some support, even if the charge is spurious.  End 
comment.) 
 
Private Tutoring Still A Concern 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶7. (U) The law as passed by the Shura Council included 
penalties for teachers who provide private tutoring outside 
the classroom, but the Education Committee of the People's 
Assembly removed these penalties before approving the law. 
Such private lessons are a fact of life in Egyptian schools, 
particularly as secondary school students approach the 
foreboding Thanawiyya Amma exam that determines their 
university futures.  They are also a means of practical 
survival for teachers, providing them many times their income 
made teaching in schools.  Sherif Omar, head of the Education 
Committee, told emboff that the penalties being discussed 
were not practical or enforceable, as after-school tutoring 
compensates teachers with extremely low salaries and parents 
whose children do not receive adequate education in school. 
Instead, he hoped that as teachers' salaries increase and the 
quality of in-class instruction improves, demand for outside 
lessons will subside. 
 
¶8. (U) Dr. Abu Serie said that changing the university 
admissions process could also help lessen the pervasive 
private lesson culture.  He said that the MOE is working with 
the Ministry of Higher Education to increase the number of 
private universities, and thus decreasing competition for 
public ones, and to change the entrance process for 
universities to include tests on specific subjects of study 
in addition to the Thanawiyya Amma. 
 
USAID Role 
---------- 
 
¶9. (SBU) USAID provided extensive technical assistance to the 
MOE to help them design the Teacher's Cadre and present it 
for passage in Parliament.  USAID has also been working with 
the MOE on defining the role of the Teacher's Academy, and is 
helping to prepare the final proposal for the Minister to 
present for the Cabinet's approval.  See reftel for more 
details on USAID's assistance in reforming the Egyptian 
education system. 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶10. (SBU) The Teacher's Cadre is an initial attempt at 
sweeping education reform in a system that has failed to 
provide its graduates with the skills to compete in a modern 
economy.  One measure of success will be the extent to which 
the government can eventually take on the private tutoring 
issue; if teachers are paid more and the quality of 
instruction goes up, then in theory the demand for such 
private instruction should lessen.  Additionally, 
implementation of the Teacher's Academy and changes in 
curriculums must emphasize critical thinking skills over rote 
learning, in order to enhance graduates' skills and 
potentially pave the way for a freer culture of independent 
thought in Egypt. 
RICCIARDONE