Problems on hold : Double-edged sword

The phenomenon of businessmen scrambling to invest in education is relatively novel; it dates back to no more than two decades. Education has indeed become a highly profitable industry that attracts countless profit seekers. Yet this is a double-edged sword. Although the decline on the part of the State to perform its role in providing adequate schools has made private sector contribution necessary, the situation has produced a sector of businessmen whose sole objective is to generate profits. If profitability conflicts with quality, the former undoubtedly takes precedence.
Private schooling is not strange to Egypt. One need only look at the schools established by missionaries and civil society organisations over the past century, and at the host of well-educated generations that graduated from them, to realise the significance of these schools.   
Today, the steady deterioration of the public education system has compounded the crisis parents face as they scramble to provide the best possible education for their children. And with the bottleneck leading to university education growing narrower by the year, the race becomes ever more fierce. The scene is indeed bleak; each year a flow of parents of newcomers into the education stream rushes to reserve a seat in this or that school for their children in preparation for the ultimate future goal of securing a place in university. The unhealthy competition has generated values of the ‘end justifies the means’. The utter goal is no longer to acquire an education for life, but to score highly in examinations. This justifies such practices as private lessons, dogmatic and rote learning that undermine creativity, and exam fraud scandals.
The private sector is now in the education arena with schools to suit various levels of income. Schools with sky-rocketing tuition fees are there for the upper classes, while students from the poor or middle classes have to make do with public schools or modest private ones, with their notoriously overcrowded classrooms and poor facilities. Huge investments are channelled into ‘luxury schools’ that boast large areas of greenery, various services, few numbers of students per class, and staff that draws heavily on native speakers of foreign languages. What with air-conditioned buses, cafeterias that offer five-star foodstuffs, and school trips on a five-star level—sometimes overseas trips—it is not for nothing that such schools are frequently termed ‘five-star schools’. The existence of a prosperous class capable of paying the exorbitant fees required has rendered investment in such schools highly profitable.
Again, I would like to stress that if such luxurious schools genuinely help improve the quality of education, one would not raise a finger in objection—despite the fact that the State licenses these school while pretending that it clings to the right of free education. Anyhow, the sole contribution made by these schools is that they alleviate the pressure on public as well as modest private schools by excluding a group of students that is by no means tiny. Eventually, it is a way to allow subsidies to reach those who need them.
Yet what remains at stake is the quality of the costly education service and the obligation to keep the school in operation even if this conflicts with profitability considerations. Many schools have managed to harmonise the goals of profitability and quality, but others have gone through fierce battles between a greedy capital that prioritises profitability and a principled administration seeking to safeguard the education process.
If capital intervention in commercial and industrial projects is understandable, it is by no means acceptable where education is concerned. The Education Ministry ought to keep a close eye on what happens in these schools so as to step in when needed, to restrain the power and greed of capital, guarantee the stability of the education process, and safeguard the students’ interests.
Education should by no means be left in the hands of people whose sole interest is the head count; as one famous saying goes: “each head [student] should generate at least EGP30,000 a year”.  

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