Can Egypt's education reforms overhaul broken system?
Analysts believe the problem of public education can’t be solved through monetary means alone, but rather with reforms to the entire educational system.
CAIRO — Classrooms that have more than 60 children, teachers who beat students and bathrooms that are rarely cleaned are part of the daily school experience for Mariam, a third-grade student in Cairo.
“We will get beaten if we don’t pay attention, if we are noisy or if we don’t do our homework,” Mariam, who goes to a public school in the extremely poor neighborhood of Manshiyet Nasr, told Al-Monitor.
Her sister, Sara, who is in fifth grade, said there are three students at each desk in all of her classes. “There are so many students,” she said.
For decades, Egypt’s public schools have been in a state of disrepair — class sizes with up to 100 students, crumbling infrastructure, poor student outcomes and badly trained and severely underpaid teachers are all the norm.
