Voices of Teachers in Academic and Vocational Secondary Schools in Egypt: Perceived Consequences of Educational Reform for Quality and Equality

Abstract

Teachers as “key actors” in the educational processes may promote, modify, or challenge educational reforms drawing upon their own meanings and perceptions of the reforms. This chapter examines teachers’ perceptions of a 1997 secondary education reform in Egypt, which was implemented during its first phase (1999– 2006) as the Secondary Education Enhancement Project. The reform was planned to convert hundreds of commercial schools into academic schools and sought to reduce the need for extra-school, private tutoring. Focus group interviews were conducted with 12 teachers working in academic and commercial secondary schools in Cairo, Egypt. Attention is given to these teachers’ perception of the reform’s likely impact on the quality of secondary education and the post-secondary educational and occupational opportunities for students from different socioeconomic backgrounds. In addition, the chapter clarifies how teachers’ views of the 1997 reform differ depending upon whether they conceive of schooling as promoting social mobility or as reproducing social inequalities. With the globalization of the economy and moves toward promoting free trade, many countries have embarked on comprehensive economic reform and structural adjustment programmes. This economic transition has increased the demand for skilled workers, which was viewed as a pressure to reform the secondary education sector, the largest supplier of skilled labourers. During the 1980s and 1990s, in Egypt, as in other countries, secondary education reform focused on improving educational quality and equality (Acedo, 2002). Nonetheless, unequal secondary and post-secondary educational and occupational opportunities among students from different socio-economic background has continued and, in some cases, increased. Existing literature offers varying explanations of the causes and effects of educational reforms in different societies, and the relationship between schooling and social inequality (Acedo, 2002; Martin, 1991; Sedere, 2000). In their analysis, functionalists argue that educational reforms are initiated when there is a need to realign the system to better match the requirements of the changing economy, since