A session at British Egyptian Business Association entitled “Sustainable Vocational Education in Egypt”, held on Wednesday highlighting the significance of vocational education and how it could be effective and widespread in Egypt.
Charlotte Bosworth, Head of Curriculum Development- OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations) – talked about vocational education provision in the UK as an example. First, she said the vocational education should be reform, as it doesn’t receive much respect. And this problem we suffered from in the UK also. But we started to reform this problem by establishing vocational schools that mainly focus on the UK economy. These schools focus on necessary skills for working in banks and hotels…. Etc.
Bosworth elaborated that these vocational schools should be supervised by universities and companies in coordination with their businessmen.
On the same context, Dr Hassan Nadir Kheirallah, President of the French University of Egypt, talked about what is called Developing Education Fund. This fund is governmental one founded in 2004, for financing the development of education; schools and universities. It has a board of directors and 7 ministers. Al Nile schools is one of its projects plus other vocational projects.
Dr Hassan explained that any development couldn’t happen unless isn’t there any technological development. As per the vocational schools, we suffer from the absence of the clever students. So we have two problems, they are; how to attract those students and how to keep them. Another problem is that the vocational schools of the ministry of education don’t have coordination in curricula.
In this respect, Dr Hassan added the fund is planning to have 4 educational stages, they are; a vocational school, then average-education institutions, bachelor degree and the vocational training. He referred to the necessity of working, after finishing these stages, in the industrial zones in Egypt, such as; Suez Canal.
Dr Hassan mentioned El Amiraya Integrated Technical Education Cluster ITEC as a model for the fund. Finally he mentioned that after negotiating with USAID, it is ready to finance such ten centers in Egypt. Also France is ready to finance two centers.
With regard to sustainability, Edward Marks, Managing Director of Barclays Bank Egypt, said it is on our schedule.
Marks referred that in the last two years they invested EGP 10 million in education field. And they have two projects in the vocational education, which hire 500 students and help about 20,000 children. 1800 people work in these two projects, also we cooperate with about 400,000 people and help there families.
“This is the social responsibility of the companies” Edward Marks said.
He explained that the discussion neglected an important part which is related to the intellectual one, the so-called “Emotional Intelligence”.
