Copyright

Tarek Shawki; Linda Herrera;

Published On

2025-11-17

Page Range

pp. 65–80

Language

  • English

Print Length

16 pages

3. ‘An Orchestra Without a Conductor’

The Need for Strategic Management of Egypt’s Education System

  • Tarek Galal Shawki (author)
Chapter of: Education 2.0: Chronicles of Technological and Cultural Change in Egypt(pp. 65–80)
Dr. Tarek Shawki, Chair of the Specialized Presidential Council for Education and Scientific Research (September 2014-August 2022), participates in a panel organized by the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies on 21 November 2016. He laments the poor state of the nation’s education system as reflected in low global rankings, endemic problems of plagiarism, and the lack of coordination, rendering it like ‘an orchestra without a conductor’. He calls for a new education governance model managed by an authority that would oversee the entire education sector to facilitate long-term strategic planning, manage international cooperation, and allow for flexibility in hiring. He suggests the Alexandria Library for the Egyptian Knowledge Bank as possible models. This chapter includes a postscript with the 2024 draft law for the ‘National Council for Education, Research and Innovation’ (Appendix A) and the structure of the Alexandria Library (Appendix B). The original talk has been edited for flow, brevity, and clarity, staying true to the original content.

Contributors

Tarek Galal Shawki

(author)

Tarek Galal Shawki was the Minister of Education and Technical Education in Egypt from 2017-2022. He received his undergraduate education at Cairo University and his PhD at Brown University. He has held positions as University Counselor at the American University in Cairo, Chair of the Specialized Presidential Council for Education & Scientific Research (2014-2022), Secretary General of the Presidential Specialized Councils in Egypt (2015-2017), Dean of the School of Sciences and Engineering at the American University in Cairo (2012-2015), Director of the Regional UNESCO Bureau for Science and Technology in Arab States (2008-2012), and professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1986-1999), where he taught a variety of engineering and applied mathematics courses to both undergraduate and graduate students. Dr. Shawki has led numerous global, regional, and national projects involving the integration of ICTs in education, science, and culture, including the Egyptian Knowledge Bank.