Expensive classrooms, poor learning: The imperatives of reforming school construction in Egypt

Egyptian schools suffer from systematic deficiencies that affect student learning, attendance, health, and dignity. These include a discrepancy between needs and actual construction projects, very poor maintenance, and massive school shortages leading to high density, overcrowding, and multiple-shift schools. Egypt’s average classroom density of 47.5 students/classroom in the primary stage is higher than the average in countries such as India and China. More than 75% of Egyptian students are in classrooms that have over 40 students. Such high classroom densities have a strongly negative impact on learning, especially at the critical primary stage. Not only does Egypt’s high average classroom density obscure large variations across the country, it also hides the problem of multiple-shift schools, where more than one school population uses the same facilities. Only one third of Egyptian public school students attend single-shift schools: the remaining 12.7 million children (of whom 7 million are in the primary stage) have to cope with overcrowded classrooms. They also have a smaller window of learning time and are often deprived of classes considered less essential like arts, music, and physical education. These conditions directly contribute to poor learning and student dropout, as well as seriously undermining equality within the system. These inadequate learning conditions, compounded by sanitary and maintenance problems, disproportionately affect those students who are already disadvantaged. Official estimates point to the need to construct 250,000 new classrooms at a cost of 130 billion Egyptian pounds (EGP) ($7.3 billion).1 This massive construction campaign must be guided by a restructuring of Egypt’s current school construction system under new parameters that will ensure better quality, lower costs, and less resource waste. School shortages and high construction costs are driven by the way in which the system is designed and managed; restrictive and unnecessary requirements increase construction costs while undermining the allocation of land for schools. Highly centralized procurement procedures contribute to high costs, resource waste, and allegations of corruption plague almost every step of the school construction process. Whereas some aspects of school construction in Egypt may be unique, many of the problems associated with the system are shared by other countries. Drawing on both the local context and relevant international data, this paper provides a comprehensive analysis of this under-researched topic, suggests alternative indicators that should be used to better enhance school construction efforts, and puts forward six key policy recommendations for reforming school construction. The recommendations are all part of a necessary restructuring of the regime of school construction and the main entity responsible for it, the General Authority for Educational Buildings (GAEB)

The lived social contract in schools: From protection to the production of hegemony

This article proposes a framework for studying the social contract along the four parameters (4Ps) of protection, provision, participation and the production of hegemony. To appreciate the differentiated experience of how these parameters are lived, this framework is applied to schools as arenas that uniquely capture the dynamics of power and legitimacy in society. The education sector reflects broader transformations in the state bureaucracy, in social policy and in the lived experience of key elements of the social contract from the rule of law and gendered violence to formal and informal privatization, everyday forms of participation and the narratives and practices around nationalism and neoliberalism that legitimize these changes. Applying this approach to the case study of Egypt updates earlier propositions about an Arab social contract and nuances the notion of a tradeoff between provision and participation rights in understanding regime legitimacy. It underlines the critical changes to protection and legitimation over the past decades and the implications of the outsourcing of various elements of the social contract to market, charitable and religious forces. Drawing on rare research inside schools catering to different social classes before and after the 2011 uprising, the article describes how their realities reflect the transformations of lived citizenship in this historical juncture. Egyptian schools reveal a ‘lived social contract’ that is underpinned by selective retraction of protection, a collapse of provision, impoverishment and Islamization of participation and a resulting disengagement from the production of hegemony

Violence, class and masculinity in Egypt: Gendered punishment in Cairene schools

Gendered violence in schools remains understudied and poorly integrated in understandings of the changing pressures facing men and women in neoliberal, securitized and precarious global contexts. This paper draws on the findings of extensive research with young men and women in Egyptian schools catering to different social classes before and after the 2011 uprising. It shows how the rise in violent punishment in Egyptian public schools reflects modes of lived citizenship, where state-sanctioned violence is intimately structured into the everyday experience of the majority of less fortunate youth and in particular young males. It explains how harsh and humiliating punishment in schools is linked to the formal and informal privatization of education, the impoverishment of teachers and the disinvestment of the state in social services. As such, it is not restricted to a minority of marginalized schools as in other contexts. The paper underlines how sexual harassment, as a critical component of the everyday lived experience of female students, cannot be understood in separation from the different forms of violence circulating in schools. It suggests that change in these practices can be catalyzed by major political events like the 2011 uprising and the sense of empowerment and entitlement it generated among young people in particular

UWB microstrip filter design using a time-domain technique

A time-domain technique is proposed for ultra-wideband (UWB) microstrip-filter design. The design technique uses the reflection coefficient (S11) specified in the frequency domain. When the frequency response of the UWB filter is given, the response will be approximated by a series of UWB pulses in the time domain. The UWB pulses are Gaussian pulses of the same bandwidth with different time delays. The method tries to duplicate the reflection scenario in the time domain for very narrow Gaussian pulses (to obtain the impulse response of the system) when the pulses are passed through the filter, and obtains the value of the filter coefficients based on the number of UWB pulses, amplitudes, and delays of the pulses

Achieving Sustainable Industrialisation in Egypt: Assessment of the Potential for EIPs

This paper explores the prospects of Egypt in achieving sustainable development goal 9 (sustainable industrialisation). It looks at the national policy efforts of the new government and finds that environmentally-sound industrial production and overall sustainable industrial development is a priority in the country\u27s vision. The analysis then takes a closer look at three case studies of attempts of the Egyptian Government to promote sustainable industrial development by establishing or developing eco-industrial parks (Robbiki Eco-Leather Park, El-Safaa Metal Foundries Zone and Shaq Al-Thu\u27ban Marble Technology Park). The analysis of the three cases outlines a number of factors impeding the success of these attempts; including weak policy and regulatory frameworks, lack of strong enforcement mechanisms, poor planning, lack of financial resources to support the relocation of most vulnerable (smallest) enterprises and the negative impact of informal economy and criminal elements. The paper concludes with several recommendations to overcome these obstacles

The Power of Reframing Incentives: Field Experiment on (Students\u27) Productivity

The study aims to test the framing effect on productivity of students in one of higher education institutions in Egypt, through using Bonus Marks incentive scheme that is commonly used in the Egyptian Universities. The goals of this study are to investigate whether the non-monetary incentive has an effect on individuals\u27 productivity, and whether individuals\u27 output and productivity are affected by the incentive frame, in addition to testing if demographic characteristics of individuals are to affect their productivity responses to incentives framing. We are not aware of studies that have explicitly studied the relative effectiveness of non-pecuniary incentives framed as either gains or losses in the Middle East higher educational context. Therefore, this paper would present the first step for future research in this area

Risk Aversion and Islamic Finance: An Experimental Approach

This article examines the effect of investor\u27s risk aversion on his choice between conventional contract and Islamic contract. The authors focused on the choice of profit loss sharing (PLS) contracts, and to what extent other factors affect choice, such as experience, religion and political factors. Lab experiment approach was applied to test the role of risk aversion, along with other factors, in affecting investor`s choice. The paper concluded that neither Islamic religion views nor risk behavior affect the choice of people with no experience in borrowing. However, inexperienced investors are affected by both political-religious orientation and risk behavior. Such finding, contradicts with the widely held belief that Islamic bank transactions are more suitable for risk-lover depositors and risk-averse borrowers. Furthermore, the paper`s results call for more unique and innovative Banks` marketing strategies specially designed for the pre-experienced investors

Mapping Student and Lecturer Perspectives: Use of L1 in a CLIL-oriented context

The aim of this paper is to describe action research conducted with lecturers who teach non-language subjects through English and their respective students at San Jorge University (USJ). The lecturers attended an introductory to teach through English following the CLIL approach (Content and Language Integrated Learning¿CLIL). To further adapt this course to the lectures` needs and resolve issues related to the use of the students` mother tongue (L1), the author surveyed the opinions of both the lecturers` and their respective students on in regards to using Spanish in the CLIL classroom, especially when new terms are presented. The answers were compiled into themes that show both groups` overall agreement to the conditioned importance of L1. The themes were: 1) reasons for using Spanish; 2) pros of using English only; 3) the use of L1 as an indicator of competence in the target foreign language (L2); 4) what students value in CLIL teaching practices. The outcomes bring into focus what students prefer and value with regards to using L1 and L2 in the CLIL classroom.Nashaat-Sobhy, N. (2017). Mapping Student and Lecturer Perspectives: Use of L1 in a CLIL-oriented context. En Buenas Prácticas de Innovación Docente en el Espacio Europeo de Educación Superior V. Ediciones Universidad San Jorge. 195-212. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/20373919521