Egypt moves to redress teacher shortages in public schools

During a Jan. 18 meeting to review the draft budget for the next fiscal year, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi instructed Finance Minister Mohamed Maait to include seven new measures in his plans. Among them were two related to the public education system, including the appointment of 30,000 new teachers annually for a period of five years, and a new incentive for teacher development worth 3.1 billion Egyptian pounds ($197 million) in total.

The aim of the mandate to significantly increase the number of teachers, according to the press statement, is to meet the development needs of Egypt’s public education sector, and the directive was praised by Education Minister Tarek Shawki as a “historic decision.” In a phone call to “Happens in Egypt” on MBC Egypt, Shawki expressed hope that the first group of 30,000 new teachers would be in place by the beginning of the next school year.

If implemented, the decision would represent an important step to halt the steady increase in a teacher-student ratio that Egypt’s public schools have experienced for years. And it could also pave the way to begin to reverse an acute shortage of professionals widely regarded as a primary reason for the current state of disrepair of its free education system.

“The decision proves that education is a state project [worth] providing all its efforts and capabilities to make it successful and to achieve Egypt’s worthy educational status,” Mahmoud Hassouna, spokesman of the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, told Al-Monitor. He noted that the five-year extension of the mandate “is a good step.”

But given the size of the current deficit, some believe that the figure is still not sufficient. Data released Jan. 15 by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) showed the acute shortage of teaching staff in public schools for the current school year. The number of teachers in the public system, which includes both Ministry of Education schools and those affiliated with Al Azhar, stands at 1.17 million, which is 1.2% less than the previous school year. Data released by CAPMAS last October also revealed that the country’s teaching staff had shrunk by about 13,000 teachers compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of students stands at 26.3 million, a figure that is growing year over year, representing an increase of 3.8% over the last year, according to CAPMAS figures.

Abdel-Hafez Tayel, president of the Egyptian Center for the Right to Education, told Al-Monitor that the roots of the crisis go back to the late 1990s, when the state policy of assigning teaching jobs to graduates of education faculties was brought to an end. From then until 2004, Tayel said, only the first batches of students were hired. And soon after, even these appointments were stopped and replaced by different types of temporary contracts, with salaries as low as $20 a month. “So the crisis is deep and old,” he noted.

At the beginning of the current school year, Shawki said that his ministry could not hire new teachers because all recruitment for the public administration was suspended. But he still revealed that 85% of his budget goes to pay teachers’ salaries. Mada Masr, an independent media organization, has reported that the ministry’s budget consistently falls below the constitutionally required 6% of the gross national income.

Over the years, this trend has left a large deficit of teachers. Last October, at the beginning of the school year, Mohamed Abdallah, secretary-general of the Teachers Union, placed this shortage at about 259,000 teachers, and noted that the number continues to climb as more teachers retire without others being hired in their place while the number of students increases.

“The shortage of teachers was one of the main reasons for the collapse of education in Egypt,” Hassan Ahmed, president of the Independent Teachers Union, told Al-Monitor. “The teachers’ compliance increased to fill the deficit, or teachers were delegated to other schools to fill the deficit; in both cases, this was a physical burden on [them] in light of the low salaries, which resulted in poor productivity,” he said. “Addressing this deficit in incorrect ways — such as temporary contracts or [individual] contributions — came at the expense of the educational process.”

In his phone interview with MBC Egypt following Sisi’s announcement, Shawki said that the decision was the result of a “careful consideration.” He detailed that the number of 30,000 new teachers per year for a period of five years was established based on an “accurate” study prepared by the ministry and later presented to Sisi.

Yet not everyone is as optimistic. “At this time, we have a shortage of more than 300,000 teachers, which means that we need to hire 300,000 teachers at once,” Tayel said. “The decision made by the president to appoint 30,000 teachers every year for a period of five years will not be enough, or will not fill the deficit.”

Sisi’s mandate would eventually total 150,000 teachers, and it is not clear whether all will be hired in the end.

Hassouna said that the new teachers will be appointed through a competition aimed to fill the teachers’ shortage across the country, stating that all details of the process will be announced in the coming weeks.

An official source at the ministry speaking on condition of anonymity told the independent news website Al-Manassa that those selected in the competition will not be directly appointed but will stay under probation for up to two years before being hired following a final evaluation.

The source said that not all those who are initially selected in the competition will therefore be hired at the end of the process, as the ministry retains the right to terminate their contract at the end of the probationary period. In this case, it is still unclear whether the figure of 30,000 teachers per year refers just to the competition or to the number that will ultimately have to be recruited.

Ahmed also said that most of the teachers currently working in the public school system will reach retirement age within less than five years, noting that this will lead the deficit to continue. Like Tayel, he believes that all the new teachers the plan calls for to be appointed over the next five years should be hired all at once now, and that as some teachers retire, they should be replaced annually.

Beyond the new appointments, Tayel noted that issues related to teachers’ salaries and their job security should be addressed, as well as the shortage in the number of schools. He puts the latter at around 20,000, and he believes it offers an opportunity to build them and hire new teachers. “There must be a comprehensive pack of solutions,” he concluded.