Training
In 2008, 11.9% of the state's expenditure on education
was allocated. The general education system, which includes
schools under the Ministry of Education and those under the
Ministry of Islamic Affairs, comprises three stages: basic
five years, preparatory three years and secondary school
three years. Very extensive exams are crucial for students'
admission to higher education. Schooling is formally
compulsory for eight years and should in principle be free
of charge, but some fees have been introduced during the
2000s. The vast majority of children go through the first
five years of primary school, and about two-thirds continue
in primary school. However, the figures vary widely within
the country; In parts of poor southern Egypt, only half of
the children attend school. About 75% of men and 58% of
women are literate, but the proportion is significantly
higher in the group 15–24 years. The differences are large
between cities and countryside. The large proportion of
illiterates in relation to the proportion of children in
school can be explained by the fact that many people drop
out prematurely, especially girls in rural areas. There is
also the greatest shortage of teachers. The national average
is one teacher per 22 pupils. Check topschoolsintheusa for test centers of ACT, SAT, and GRE as well high schools in the country of Egypt.
In addition to the regular school system, there are a
large number of Islamic schools. At higher levels, besides
numerous vocational and teacher schools and technical
institutes, there are also twelve state and several private
universities, including al-Azhar in Cairo, one of the oldest
universities in the Arab world, founded in 972.
In order to encourage students to educate themselves,
earlier "social guarantees" were used, ie. the state
undertook to employ the highly educated who were unable to
find work in the private sector. As a result, the public
sector was flooded with more or less well-trained officials
who could not be prepared for meaningful employment.
Although this policy has now been abandoned, it has in
practice proved difficult to abandon these guarantees.
Compared to other Arab countries, Egypt has a high
proportion of well-educated.
Egypt has been in close contact with Israel since 2007
over the blockade of Gaza. While for Israel it is about
crushing the Palestinian people, it is for Egypt to avoid
the success of Palestine's Hamas-led government in Gaza, as
it would strengthen the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Egypt
is therefore holding the border against Gaza under military
guard to prevent supplies from entering Gaza. During
Israel's war against Gaza in December 2008-January 2008,
Egypt refused to open the border to allow the civilian
population to escape the Israeli terrorist bombings. Since
2008, some emergency aid convoys from Europe have been
allowed to pass through the Egyptian blockade. However, in
December 2009, authorities rejected a group of 1,000 people
from 43 countries who wanted to bring relief to the confined
population.
Torture remains widespread in Egyptian police stations
and in prisons. Prisoners are murdered regularly, and
Amnesty International states in its reports that access to a
fair trial is limited and usually completely absent when it
comes to political matters. During a large-scale political
trial in 2009 against 26 people, their defenders ended up
retiring in October because the court had made a prior
decision on the guilt of the accused.
2011 Exit Mubarak
In December 2010, WikiLeaks published embassy reports
from US embassies since 1965. The reports indicated, among
other things, that the superpower had a thorough knowledge
of the widespread corruption in Tunisia, and in particular
that the president's and his wife's families had stolen
several billion US dollars from the Tunisian state. The
"news", which was in fact known by most already linked to
the country's high unemployment, led to a rebellion against
the country's dictator for 24 years, Ben Ali, who was sent
into exile in Saudi Arabia on January 14.
From Tunisia, the rebellion against the US and EU
traditional allies in the Arab world spread to Morocco,
Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain and Egypt. On January 25 -
11 days after the dictator's fall in Tunisia - tens of
thousands walked the streets of Cairo demanding the
departure of Mubarak, followed by thousands in other major
cities in Egypt. The security forces went to a limited
extent to attack the protesters.
On January 28, the opposition was proclaimed the Day of
Wrath, and this day revealed that the same kind of double
power that had led to the dictator's departure in Tunisia
also existed in Egypt. President Mubarak ordered the
military into the cities, where hundreds of thousands of
protesters gathered after the Friday prayer in protest
against Mubarak. But the military refused to attack the
protesters and intervened on several occasions between the
security forces - which did not have this kind of suspicion
- and the protesters. Therefore, the security forces'
assaults could only be counted in dozens killed - not
hundreds. Mubarak again responded by partly withdrawing the
security forces to their barracks - to avoid the clashes
between security forces and military that had led to Ben
Ali's fall in Tunisia; partly to impose curfew. The problem,
however, was that the military refused to enforce the
president's curfew, leaving many thousands of protesters at
Tahrir Square in central Cairo. The following day, January
29, Mubarak sought to strengthen his connection to the
military by appointing military intelligence chief Omar
Suleiman as vice president and dissolving the government.
Withdrawal of the security forces pulled the resolution
in length, and the protests continued with increasing force,
with hundreds of thousands of protesters daily in the
streets. The Muslim Brotherhood, the country's otherwise
largest banned opposition party, at this time remained
completely absent in the protests voiced by workers and
youth.
|
