Shawki Reveals Steps to Resume Education in Egypt Under Coronavirus

This morning, Minister of Education Dr. Tarek Shawki revealed that the government is now weighing scenarios of how to launch the new academic year, due to start next September, especially as the Coronavirus crisis continues.

Speaking during a Parliamentarian meeting for the new state budget 2020/2021, Dr. Shawki added: "The world after the Corona pandemic is different, but there is also a positive aspect, especially that the online platform can now be used to share the educational process with schools and thus pide time between classes and online lessons, and hence, reduce pressure on Classrooms and schools."

He pointed out to the "Knowledge Bank", saying that it has about 80 million views, during May, adding: "Students and parents, when they had to, they logged into the Knowledge Bank and discovered that there is huge cognitive wealth there."

He noted that some international organizations in 52 countries asked Egyptian authorities to use the Knowledge Bank after it proved success in the recent crisis.

The minister also noted that the recent crisis "forced us to work on a new system to evaluate about 15 million students, and this issue has helped in orienting students for a new mode of studying hat does not depend on just memorizing and answering questions in the exam.

Further more, Shawki said that there is now a virtual platform for education in 55 thousand schools with virtual classes and 15 thousand students. He noted that parents and teachers participate side by side on the same platform. "The matter is similar to Facebook but at the school level," he explained.

On another hand, the minister revealed the main features of the state’s plan to conduct high school exams and technical diplomas, which are scheduled to be officially announced for the public on May 15, as the exams are scheduled to take place on June 7.

He explained that the number of students who will undergo high school exams is 660 thousand  and a little more than that for technical diplomas.

He pointed out that the number of students in each exam room will not exceed 14 students, and thus it was decided to increase the number of exam rooms by 60% to reach 5,000, nationwide, with total securing cost that exceeds, this time, its annual rate of about one billion and 300 million EGP.

As for  the protective measures, Dr. Tariq Shawki confirmed that 5,000 sterilization gates will be installed on the various examination rooms, and that the classes, rooms and examination papers will be sterilized daily before and after the exams, and that 25 million masks will be distributed to those attend to the places including supervisors, students, employees, and workers, as well as providing devices to cover shoes before entering the rooms, and preparing isolation rooms ambulances to deal with any cases of suspicion.

On the claims of some to cancel or postpone the high school exams, he ruled out those suggestions, saying that they will have serious consequences. As for suggestions of replacing the exams with abilities tests, the minister said that "this is ridiculous nonsense."