A Small Island in an Ocean of Ministerial Bureaucracy

Against the background of stalled reforms in the Egyptian educational system, private IT companies are increasingly taking the opportunity to train local teachers and hope to gain a long-term foothold in the market for their products. Frederik Richter reports from Cairo

Yasser Abdel Wahab works for Intel, but has nothing to do with software or hardware. He has only one task – to administer the training program that Intel is sponsoring in the Middle East. Nonetheless, Abdel Wahib is an extremely busy manager, and one can only get to meet him late evenings around a water pipe.

His business is primarily in Egypt. There, the government together with eight international IT companies, including large corporations such as Intel and Siemens, has started a new training initiative.

This past summer, at one stroke, some 53,000 teachers registered for vocational training courses. An additional 12,000 teachers from a total of 2000 schools will also take part in further training programs in the near future. The courses will introduce teachers to working with computers and new learning materials.

Teamwork instead of learning by rote

"The program is not, however, some sort of IT training," says Wahab. Instead, it aims to improve the all-around quality of the lessons – student teamwork, a problem-oriented approach rather than learning by rote, and project instruction are some of the areas covered in the training course.

"This makes a huge difference," believes Wahab. "I was educated in Egypt. You sit on your bench, consume the material, and think that you shouldn't share anything with anyone else."

Independently of the current initiative, Intel plans to train an additional 650,000 teachers on its own. The company has thereby shown itself to be even more ambitions than other businesses active in the IT field in Egypt.

The Egyptian Ministry of Education presents a rather different, seemingly uninvolved image. Its press spokesman referred to the participating companies and the responsible department head in the IT Ministry. In the end, he refused to answer any questions about the program.

"The teacher training program is the responsibility of international corporations – whether they conduct it themselves or commission specialized companies to do it," confirmed Hoda Baraka, the department head overseeing the project at the IT Ministry. "This also applies to the evaluation of the program."

Egypt's educational malaise

Time and again, the Egyptian government has failed with comprehensive reforms of the educational system. There are around 800,000 teachers for Egypt's 16 million pupils, and, over and above this, some 1.2 million bureaucrats assigned to administer the system.

The result is a bureaucratic monster primarily concerned with its own interests. This is because any reform or changes in the regulations poses a threat to teachers' and administrators' additional sources of income.

The majority of teachers live on the basis of private lessons, and, considering their low salaries, one can hardly blame them. After ten years of teaching, they are paid less than 60 euros a month. As a consequence, some teachers provide no instruction within the curriculum whatsoever, choosing instead to offer only private lessons at school.

Managable IT projects, on the other hand, can be realized without any great resistance and cover up the failures of comprehensive reforms. "It is the simplest way to start reforms, and the officials also have something to point to quickly," says Najat Rochdi, regional coordinator for ICTDAR, an organization under the umbrella of the UNDP. Its job is to consult governments in the Middle East on the use of IT in development projects.

In light of the aforementioned stalled reforms, international IT companies like Siemens and Intel are attempting to improve the educational system in Egypt by assuming one of the basic responsibilities of the state, namely, the training and qualification of its teachers.

Yet, without simultaneous educational reforms, such initiatives are akin to small islands, which float adrift in the gigantic bureaucratic ocean of the Egyptian ministerial and school administration.

"The educational system has to be reformed as well," warns Rochdi. "We just can't continue as we have been doing."

Long-term corporate interests

Companies have their own interests, too. In order to sell their IT products, such as computers and software, to developing and newly industrialized countries, they first have to create a market for themselves. Although the training programs promise no immediate advantages, they are part of a long-term strategy to introduce their lucrative products to Egypt.

Less than five percent of all households in Egypt own a computer. The devices are either too expensive or have, until now, been exclusively reserved for the highly educated classes.

The increased availability of Internet connections and the lowering of PC prices have provided the impetus for local and international IT companies to cooperate with the government on various initiatives.

In the process, international companies, not least due to their own interests, have shown themselves to be considerably more dynamic than ministerial bureaucracies in pressing forward with projects. "Even ten years ago, many schools were equipped with PCs. Yet, they were hardly touched, because until now the teachers didn't know how to use them," reports Ehab El Anany, a teacher from Benha, a small city in the Nile Delta.

Positive response

In any case, teachers are pleased with the welcome training. El Anany is enthusiastic. "It brings new life to my classes. We now work on projects. In mathematics classes, the pupils have a connection to the subject in their daily lives. And many even love math now – only because they get to use a computer in class."

Normally, teachers themselves apply for further vocational training courses, while the school administration publicizes the training program and is responsible for the selection of participants. There are no direct contacts with or responsibilities towards the IT companies. After six months, a so-called "follow-up training" course is given in order to ensure the program's long-term success.

Najat Rochid from the UNDP has since seen progress on the part of governments. "Certain countries in the region are now sitting down and drafting strategies, whereby IT is not merely the starting point, but an instrument for development."

Despite this, international companies are spurring on improvements in the educational system, and, in the process, know how to embed themselves in the milieu. As the best graduates from the first group of teachers in the summer program were to be honored, Intel wanted a role and invited teachers and officials to a conference center of the Egyptian air force for a joint evening meal during Ramadan.

The venue is so luxurious that one might be excused for thinking it one of Cairo's five-star hotels. Only Education Minister Ahmad Gamal Eddin Moussa cancelled his appearance at the last minute.

Frederik Richter

Translated from the German by John Bergeron

Qantara.de

Private Universities in Egypt
Education as Export Commodity
Gold-diggers from all corners of the earth appear to be streaming to the Nile. Private universities are a lucrative business in Egypt and are springing up like mushrooms. A report by Frederik Richter

Online Media Censorship in Egypt
Internet Police on the Nile
Although the Egyptian government initially promoted the spread of Internet use, the new media has today become a thorn in the side of many state authorities. Censorship and the banning of websites are no longer a rarity, as Nelly Youssef reports from Cairo

Education in the Middle East
German Universities an Export Hit in the Arab World
While Germans continue to bemoan their educational system, German higher education is being successfully exported to the Arab world. Jabeen Bhatti reports