According to the Egyptian Mail on Saturday, Minister of Education Hussein Kamel Bahaaeddin is fighting a desperate war against private tuition tycoons.
Unfortunately, parents have not paid much attention to the minister's crusade to eliminate the “disastrous” phenomenon.
About 19 million children started the new school year in Egypt last week.
Almost 10 years ago, said the paper, Bahaaeddin launched a fierce attack against teachers who force school children into taking private lessons. “Roaring with his most serious threats so far, the minister vowed that he would 'wipe out' the trend (as well as the fundamentalism found in certain schools) at any cost.”
He sounded serious when he transferred several notorious private tuition tycoons in Cairo and Giza to remote provincial towns.
Unfortunately, in the course of the school year at the time, the minister's comprehensive war quietly subsided until it completely fizzled out, said the report, attributing the failure partly to misunderstanding on the part of parents.
“Kind-hearted parents who still held out some hope for the minister's proposals suggested that the concurrent eruption of fundamentalist trends in schools might have distracted the minister's attention away from his 'prime targets'.
But the minister renewed his threats to eradicate private tuition at the beginning of this school year.
The minister, however, continued to employ euphemisms, merely replacing his "elimination process" with "putting an end to the disgusting phenomenon."
Other new tactics involved the minister "promising" to improve the situation of teachers. He said that a qualified and responsible teacher (providing he or she refrained from the lucrative temptation to give private lessons) would receive generous bonuses and allowances on a monthly basis. The private tutors were too stubborn to pay heed to the minister's promises and, realizing that Bahaaeddin was engaged in a losing battle against the teachers, parents stopped complaining.
Citing a survey a few years ago, the report said that some seven million pounds are spent every year on private lessons. In fact, some “economists are not joking when they suggest that private tuition is partially responsible for the liquidity crunch in the domestic market,” said the Mail – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
