 |
Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440 
|
||
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
|
Al-Ahram Weekly 29 July - 4 August 1999 Issue No. 440
|
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
| ||
Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Travel Living Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters The Thanawiya syndrome
By Said Ismail Ali*
When the new Thanawiya Amma (secondary school certificate examination) system was adopted in 1994, allowing students to sit for the exam in two stages, and thereby offering them the opportunity to improve their overall averages, it was widely perceived as having the potential to alleviate the stress associated with such a crucial exam, a traumatic experience for Egyptian families. The system, however, did no such thing: it just increased the anxiety by spreading it out over two years.
The exam itself is not the cause of anxiety; rather, the sharp disparity between supply and demand in universities is at stake. The number of students competing to enrol far exceeds university capacity. This fuels tension, leads to overcrowded classrooms, and breeds cutthroat competition in the Thanawiya 'Amma, which functions as a placement exam. Since new entrants on the job market find their status and earnings determined by the faculty they studied in, some fields witness the most vicious competition.
A school should prepare students for the job market instead of swelling the lines of university applicants. Egypt needs to double its university capacity to meet the generally accepted ratio of one university per two million inhabitants. Finally, we need to rehabilitate certain occupations, traditionally considered less prestigious. Unfortunately, we still link social status with income. The income scale must therefore be revised to ensure a more just and equitable distribution of social value.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is a professor of education at Ain Shams University.
