The announcement of the results of the final exams of this year’s Thanawyya Amma (high school certificate) has apparently brought parents much pain and scant joy on learning of their offspring’s education fate.
Addressing concerned parents and their children, Education Minister Tarek Shawki pointed out that this year’s results are lower than last year’s; and far lower than in all previous years. He disclosed that the success rate for students in the school year 2020/21 is 74%, compared to 81.5% in 2019/20. According to the minister, only 20,190 students scored more than 90% this year – a far cry from the 90,000 who passed with flying colours last year. For the first time in decades, no one obtained the credulity-stretching 100%.
Undoubtedly, there will be considerable gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as parents’ hopes to see their children press their noses against the university sweetshop window looking at the glittering prizes are dashed. Were those billions of Egyptian pounds for private lessons shelled out in vain, leaving students and elders shell-shocked at the prospect of barren academic landscapes and hope groaning on the ole barbed wire?
Over the past decades, achieving the 100% record in Thanawyya Amma final exam had become a phenomenon, misleading parents into believing that their alleged prodigies would soon receive the torch from great physicists, such as the German Albert Einstein or the Egyptian-born American Ahmed Zewail.
Unfortunately, some of these alleged smart minds performed very miserably when they joined a faculty of medicine, a faculty of engineering or a faculty of sciences.
Traditionally, the Ministry of Education comes under fire for setting question sheets that allegedly tax the eggheads and the prodigies. However, Shawki explained that from now on, the aim of the examinations is to assess the student’s talent and process of creativity not how well he/she has memorised the textbook.
This year’s Thanawiyya Amma results show that Minister of Education Tarek Shawki has been successful in his efforts to revolutionise Egypt’s education process from the bottom to the top. His reforms will definitely equip graduates to compete in the job market. Shawki should be encouraged, not criticised. Egyptian parents should lay aside their mistaken ideas of their children’s future and talent. By the way, Einstein was told by one headmaster to leave the school for being such a prig.
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