ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Need For an Islamic Pedagogy INTRODUCTION Egypt has a population of about 82 million; it is split into 26 governorates with about 90% of the people living on the 10% of the land around the Nile, and the currency is the Egyptian pound. Egypt is ruled by an authoritarian regime that has ruled by marshal law since 1981.

This emergency law is the primary obstacle to change in Egypt, including in the field of education-not to mention that 1.3 of the 1.7 billion in American funding is spent on support of the military which upholds these policies (Boustany, 2008; Kelly, 2006; Zuhur, 2007, pgs. 2, 18 )3 . Egypt has the largest educational system in the Middle East (Sadik, 2006, p. 87).

This is mainly due to the tremendous population explosion over the last half a century, which has also caused a great decline in per student expenditure (at 40 percent per five years in the 1990s) and is getting worse (World Bank, 2009, p.12). Education in Egypt is very centralized and controlled by the Ministry of Education- with two “sub” ministries.

The main educational system in Egypt is governed by a sub ministry called the Ministry of Education and Learning and is divided into two stages: the first compulsory stage, from ages six to fourteen, is split into two cycles, five then three years (only about ten percent of the population can afford any level of private education).

At the end of the second preparatory cycle, students take a high-stakes national final exam which will essentially determine the rest of their life, whether they go to general or technical secondary education (Leavitt, 1992, pgs.96-97). If admitted to general education, the second stage is two years of general studies and one year specializing in a particular subject.

The type of certificate granted at the end of the third year depends on the score achieved on the final national exam which will determine potential entrance into a university, and if admitted, the field qualified for out of the student’s list of preferences (i.e.: Arts, Engineering, Medicine, etc.). This final exam covers every course taken in high-school and is such a catastrophic event that some students commit suicide every year from sheer stress (Elhakeem, 2008)!

“The Ministry of Education has repeatedly defeated efforts to change the national exam” (Leavitt, 1992, p.97).