Mubarak vows to make comprehensive reforms in education
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt yesterday vowed that his government will make "comprehensive" reforms in the educational system so as to prepare the Egyptians for "a modern and open" future.
Mubarak said at the opening of the conference on developing education in Cairo in a live televised speech lasting for 30 minutes that the Egyptians have to be open to cultures of people, noting that their educational system should "merge with the educational system in the outer world." He added that education is considered the base for progress and a cornerstone for building" a modern and open state and to achieve human development."
He added that "international criterion in education should be followed up in order to increase integration with the foreign world and permit openness to other societies cultures and civilizations." Mubarak said that the private sector will be given a greater role to run schools in the country. But he did not indicate how this will be achieved.
Here follows is the speech in Alexandria yesterday by Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak on Education reform.
Brothers and Sisters,
Students, boys and girls,
ÊÊÊ It is my pleasure to address you today at the start of this extensive meeting on education development in Egypt. We hereupon begin a fresh stage of constructive dialogue on all items that stand atop of the society's interests.
Such dialogue is based on an open view and concerted opinions among all parties. This comes in the framework of promoting the popular and social participation in our national action, so as to achieve our nation's ambitions for comprehensive and integrated development.
Despite the multi-items of priority of the Egyptian society that target developing and improving life on Egypt's land, and that will be discussed over the next months in consecutive extensive meetings, I was keen to invest this gathering to carry on national dialogue on the education issue that I consider pivotal and decisive.
I was keen as well to extend this dialogue to cover education in its two aspects: the university and pre-university stages.
We do believe that the education process is continual and ever-developing with no dividing lines among its parts.
Education cannot be separated also from other social development items that we try to realize parallel progress in all of them.
Our launching point has been and is still that education is the base of advancement, being a key pillar of building up the open modern state.
Such a state centers on the new developed thoughts and on the conscious social participation with a mounting belief that human development constitutes one of the basic foundations of the all-out development whether political, economic or social.
If our view regarding upgrading education and eradicating illiteracy in the 1980s was launched from local opinion which determined the priorities and steps of implementation, the main challenge that faces us now is to cope with the international criteria in education in a way that provides more integration with the outer world.
This also can cement our openness towards other civilizations, cultures and societies.
We have actually achieved considerable success in developing the educational infrastructure. We have provided education for all and offered equal chances among males and females that match with world standards.
Yet, it is imperative for us to admit frankly and lucidly that the final product of education in Egypt still requires great amount of development and modernization.
We have to fulfill cherished aims of quality and efficiency so that education can achieve its basic targets that harmonize with the contemporary age spirit that could be summed up as follows:
ÊÊÊ First: To promote orientation toward the society of information and boosting the impetus of innovation and creation.
This demands more caring for all education stages starting by early childhood.
Fresh chances of pre-school kids' education have to be provided especially those who belong to limited-income brackets. The aim is to help those children continue education in later stages and guarantee their non-leaking from schools. Hence, the rate of illiteracy could be reduced.
It is imperative to exert more efforts to ultimately put an end to illiteracy.
Second: To enhance the competitive potentials of youth.
They should be given great opportunities of success in achieving personal ambitions together with putting our national targets into action.
The Egyptian youth have to consolidate their self-confidence via supporting honorable rivalry in related domains.
Third: To deepen the spirit of homeland allegiance and love based on conscious awareness of both rights and duties.
Such spirit can promote youngsters' participation in all aspects of progress on Egypt's land out of individual sentiment.
Again, this spirit has to be deepened in parents through gradually reducing spending money for improving their dependents' educational standard outside education institutions.
Fourth: To root down the traditional values of Egyptian society.
To consolidate the coherence of its social and religious texture through supporting of mechanisms of achieving social justice and equality in education opportunities and its quality regardless of social standard or financial capability.
Fifth: To create an effective student life in schools and universities that promotes the integrated vision based on the fact that students are the pivot of the education process.
Such a life has to assert the integration of student activities Ð whether social, sport or cultural Ð together with scientific and cognitive aspects.
Our objective is to create new generations capable of amalgamating with "others" inside or outside home.
They should believe in concepts of dialogue, conviction and continuation away from quarreling, militant or extremist acts.
Sixth: To curb the problem of unemployment, education should be directed in a way that provides the know-how and experiences demanded by domestic work-market on one hand.
On the other hand education has to produce highly qualified youths to cope with international criteria for teaching and training.
Other countries and societies can make use of their experiences and potentials and hence tone down pressure on local work market.
The matter requires special interest in developing technical education that should be connected with developing secondary and higher education.
This could be achieved via joint effort by education and production institutions in both the state-owned and the private sectors.
We have to realize technical education that minimizes not augments the unemployment problem.
It also demands a view of more developed Al-Azhar education that promotes the status of that reverend institution being the main sources of enlightened Islamic knowledge and the key advocate of the tolerant Islamic values and principles.
For education development can achieve its objectives with regard to the individual and society, it is imperative that we pay a growing attention to a number of main components of the educational process.
We should view it from a modern perspective which considers the education development as a lasting and continued process, based on priorities agreeable with the spirit of the age and takes into consideration the typical characteristics of the Egyptian society.
Based on what has been achieved in the previous year, I place before you today the main trends on which our education policy is based in the next stage.
First: Developing the education curricula and the teaching methods in the various stages, they must be based on the present and modern concepts to enhance the student's ability in developing his knowledge throughout his lifetime.
This development must be continuous, renewed and connected with what is taking place in the entire world.
This requires increasing attention in teaching languages, and Arabic comes first, as well as developing the syllabi of languages, not only reading and writing literacy, but using languages to deepen the knowledge of sciences, mathematics, literatures and other subjects of modern time.
Curricula development is connected with incorporating the advanced technologies in education and training as well as linking them with developing the testing system and modernizing methods of measuring the student's performance and abilities.
This also requires restructuring the curricula from a new perspective that motivates the student for research and creativity, aiming at early orienting them towards a more outstanding education that copes with their abilities and yields the utmost benefit to our country.
Second: Developing the skills of the teachers and the faculty staff members through training as well as keeping them in a continued contact with regional and world levels.
They must be given constant attention by consolidating their material and psychological stability that will double their performance ability. All this must be integrated in a better system of rewarding and accountability based on objectivity.
In this context, there must be consideration for the advantages of applying new policies, based on renewed licensing, for a certain number of years, to those who practice teaching and relating this to continuity of training, development of ability and getting acquainted with the latest developments of the age.
Third: Expanding the implementation of decentralization in management of educational process in all governorates, along with maintaining a national trend through which we determine the bases and objectives as well as the practical criteria each and every educational institution in Egypt should abide by.
We have successful experiences in this field in several governorates that can constitute the basis for wider-range experiments that go in line with the objectives that should be achieved.
They also can secure growing social support for the educational process, from planning to decision taking, implementation and evaluation.
Fourth: Deepening the feeling that that the educational process is basically a social one.
This requires promotion of private and non-profit sectors and the civil society's role in providing the infrastructure needed for education and its management within the framework that would realize national objectives and is subject to the uniform criteria of education in Egypt.
This includes the establishment of national and private universities, model cooperative schools and other educational establishments that would promote education integration in the ongoing development and modernization movement in the society.
This, doubtlessly, necessitates a shrewd futuristic vision of the way of effective social participation with the government to achieve the needed expansion to make available the educational institutions needed for facing the growing population increase, that would account for 94 million by the year 2017, unless current increase rates drop, and to guarantee quality and equality in the educational process despite the growing pressure resulting from this increase.
Fifth: Promoting scientific research culture and providing research prerequisites for the students in all education stages so as for scientific research to become part of the fabric of students' thinking.
This is besides getting the maximum benefit from relative experiences of the Egyptian society as well as foreign ones to uplift intellectual and civilizational level and realize higher standard of living.
Sixth: Paying attention to including students with special needs in the different stages of educational process and working for developing buildings and education materials to be able to provide equal education opportunities that would make of them effective elements at the service of society.
Seventh: University educational curricula and programs should be flexible and diversified, with each and every university and faculty having its own education methods that distinguish it from other ones and reflect its independent personality.
This requires choosing the best elements of staff members and researchers who are capable of using scientific research to achieve more development and progress.
It also necessitates continuing support for their scientific abilities through training and close connection with advanced universities, besides innovated systems for choice, appointment and promotion, to be set by coordination between the government and staff members so as to give priority to efficiency and guarantee freedom of university and higher education institutions to secure continuity for the most qualified and the most distinguished.
Eighth: Providing new places for absorbing increasing numbers of youth in the universities and higher education over the coming ten years to relieve the impact of secondary education certificate on the Egyptian families who want their sons to have high quality education.
This entails the government to facilitate the building of new universities and divide big universities into smaller ones to cover wider geographical range and achieve more social participation in the educational process within a framework of full abidance by the new educational criteria to be developed continuously.
The government has to make of this integrated attitude towards education development a beginning for integrated comprehensive policies aiming at higher quality in all services offered for the Egyptian citizen.
This would require from each and every body, be it production or service, to determine the quality criteria that should be met and evaluation indicators that should be followed, and to be subject to performance evaluation and accreditation from neutral bodies.
This would increase our competitiveness and fulfill the aspirations of our citizens.
Brothers and sisters
Dear students
ÊÊÊ I have offered, in my speech before People's Assembly and Shura Council, the issue of quality of education in Egypt and we have started a national, technical and public dialogue about the best means to achieve this end.
Today, those debates have resulted in a consensus opinion on the importance of establishing a body to guarantee both quality and documentation and observe the administrative and educational performance of all educational institutions.
This body has to make sure that educational institutions are able to prepare a graduate who belongs to his nation, able to serve it and take part in the universal competition.
The government has finished the establishing draft law of the authority of guaranteeing quality and documentation in education as an independent institution which enjoys neutrality and transparency.
This authority will be affiliated to the President and seek the trust of Egyptian and international societies in the outcomes of educational institutions in Egypt.
This authority will try to enhance the principle of social participation in observation, support the atmosphere of quality and promote the values of distinguishing in institutions of education.
I will transfer the draft law to People's Assembly to document it in its next session including the timetables which will enable us to establish the infrastructure of a new stage in developing education in Egypt.
The new stage will focus on the quality of education and will raise it to the known international levels in the frame works of our plans aiming at depending on the qualified youths in all fields of national work.
Brothers and sisters
ÊÊÊ At the end of my speech, I would like to affirm that cooperation among all of you in the government, educational bodies, private sector and civil society is a required and basic factor to achieve targets and ambitions we all seek in order to develop the educational process to cope with requirements of our society in the 21st century.
Responsibility is a massive national work which never to be divided. Interests are common for the nation and there is no difference between the government, private sector or civil society.
Developing education is the main support for all sectors and the whole society in order to develop the Egyptian citizen.
I am very sure that the new government, which participated positively in forming such policies and trends, will play its entrusted role to support its implementation in a frame of an increased openness with other parties in the society, the matter which will support the spirit of the teamwork in developing and modernizing the educational process in its all stages as well as Egypt's youths.
As I am looking forward to following your detailed debates on this subject which is vital and necessary for Egypt and its coming future and generations and in order to know your suggested policies and measures, I pray to Allah to guide us to achieve all good results for our nation and the hope of our sons in a bright future.
Peace be with you