Project

Education Support Program - Egypt

Map of Egypt The recent political transformation in Egypt created both opportunities and vulnerabilities in the country’s education system. Fortunately, much progress toward improved education systems and delivery has been made over the past 10–12 years. The Education Reform Programs (ERP1 and 2) improved governance, learning outcomes, teacher and leadership practices, and the overall policies affecting the environment and management of the educational system.

The Education Support Program builds on the institutional achievements made by ERP 1, supported by USAID, in strengthening the local educational structures. The Program will support teacher professional development and community involvement in educational decision-making and quality improvement. It also seeks to enhance the Ministry of Education's capacity for crisis contingency planning so that political and social disruptions to the school system in the future can be well managed, thus reducing the negative impacts of such disruptions.

The program will address a number of major fragilities in the following ways:

It will strengthen civil society’s capacity by enhancing the Ministry’s ability to support and strengthen the Board of Trustees.
It will support a competitive small grants program that will enable areas most impacted by the economic and social disruptions to pay school fees and address the lost opportunities to learn caused by closing of schools and the lack of security.
It will address the Ministry’s need to provide rapid upgrading of the skills of recently hired assistant teachers while strengthening local capacities to respond to this need.
It will support processes that enhance the Ministry’s ability to respond to fragility in the future. Efforts will emphasize further increasing women’s participation in governance processes and girls’ access to and retention in school.

AIR will draw on this experience and expertise to enhance capacity for good governance and data-driven decision-making from the community level to the district and central levels. The emphasis will be on addressing the needs of children in the “most impacted areas,” including security, and the need to bolster the ability of the Board of Trustees to improve access, retention, and learning outcomes among these same children and communities. In the process, we will ensure that the participation of women is increased and appreciated. Additional new assistant teachers will improve the classroom practice and the local systems for providing long-term teacher professional development at sustainable cost.