Egypt’s Minister of Education and Technical Education Mohamed Abdel Latif has presented the country’s experience in education reform and its use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) at a UNICEF Executive Board meeting in New York on Friday.
The ministry described the participation as the first of its kind by an Egyptian education minister.
Invited by UNICEF, Abdel Latif took part in a high-level session titled “Education Technology, AI and the Learning Revolution: From Promise to Proof”. He highlighted Egypt’s efforts to move beyond small-scale technology initiatives and implement reforms across the education system.
Abdel Latif said Egypt’s approach focuses on demonstrating that technology can improve learning outcomes on a large scale while ensuring equal access for all children.
He stressed that digital equity is about more than providing students with devices. It also requires child protection, teacher support, digital skills and the effective use of data to identify students at risk of falling behind.
In partnership with UNICEF, Egypt has integrated digital safety and responsible internet use into school subjects, reaching around 12 million students. The curriculum covers age-appropriate issues, including cybersecurity, data privacy, online bullying and harmful online behaviour.
Egypt is also developing a national digital platform for teachers and students in co-operation with UNICEF and the Global Partnership for Education, the minister said.
The platform is designed to help teachers manage assessments and attendance, track students’ learning progress and use data to support early interventions for students who may need additional assistance.
Abdel Latif said teacher development programmes were launched this year in co-operation with Harvard University and Hiroshima University.
Meanwhile, around 700,000 first-year secondary students studied JavaScript last year through an international digital platform.
Programming education is set to expand from September 12 to around 800,000 students. The programme will cover JavaScript and Python and will also be extended to technical education.
Egypt currently provides free tablets each year to around 700,000 secondary students.
The programme is also being expanded to technical and technological education, bringing the total number of government-provided devices to more than 1.2 million.
Abdel Latif also said nationwide student attendance has reached 87%.
Over the past two years, the ministry has worked to address classroom overcrowding and teacher shortages without placing an additional burden on the state budget, he told the event.
Abdel Latif stressed that technology and AI cannot replace the fundamental skills students need to succeed.
He said education technology should build on strong foundations in reading, writing, mathematics and other basic skills.
These foundations, he added, enable students to develop critical and algorithmic thinking and to use AI consciously, effectively and responsibly.
