CAIRO — The educational system in Egypt is in a miserable state. In the World Economic Forum’s 2015-2016 Global Competitiveness Report, the country ranked 139th out of 140 countries in the “quality of the education system” index. The educational system has been criticized due to the rigidity of the curriculum, dependence on rote memorization instead of scientific research, classroom overcrowding, a lack of laboratories and a lack of competent faculty and staff. There is, however, some hope on the horizon for a better future for Egypt and Egyptians, namely STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) schools.

These schools take in the country’s highest scoring students on the middle-school final exams after they also pass several admission tests. The curriculum is based on scientific research and requires students to complete one scientific project per semester. While Ministry of Education officials hope that these students would be Egypt’s future scientists, this project is colliding with the fact that no Egyptian university is at a high enough level for these students to attend after they graduate from the STEM schools.

Egyptian Minister of Education Al-Hilali Al-Sherbini told Al-Monitor, "So far we have established nine schools of this kind. The cost per school is 100 million Egyptian pounds ($11.3 million), even though each entering class has only about 150 students and each classroom has 25 students. This high cost is due to the sophisticated workshops, student housing and athletic fields. The ministry plans to have one such school in every province by 2018.”

Hilali explained that each of these schools is equipped with 12 sophisticated workshops, including workshops for electronics, chemistry, communications, biology, robotics and manufacturing. Regarding the tuition fees, Hilali said, "Students pay the schools a very small amount of about 3,000 pounds, including 2,000 pounds as a deposit for a laptop computer and only 1,000 pounds for tuition and housing for three years. Each student costs the Ministry of Education 30,000-40,000 pounds [$3,400-$4,500] a year.”