Introduction and Background
In October 2022, Egyptian Minister of Education and Technical Education Dr. Reda Hegazy submitted to the Parliament a draft law, ultimately rejected by strong opposition, to legalize private extracurricular tutoring centers, which had been operating illegally and outside the formal economy, and establish a company affiliated with the ministry to manage and supervise them. The minister explained that although he was aware of the danger that these illegal centers pose to the education system, the proposal to legalize these private centers would address a bitter reality: public extracurricular tutoring centers were no longer feasible in the face of their informal private competition. The minister proposed entrusting their management to private companies and changing their name to school support groups, which would provide higher quality educational services at lower prices while competing with and ultimately eliminating informal private tutoring centers. This is indeed what happened later through Ministerial Decision No. 28 of 2023.
Approximately 47 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately US$992 million) was being spent annually on these informal private lessons; by legalizing them, the State would be able to tax these institutions. The minister assured that the centers would never replace schools and would instead be governed for the benefit of parents and students through imposed standards and controls on the scientific material taught, class sizes, and so on.
Although this move toward legalizing extracurricular private tutoring centers was considered a rupture in the Ministry of Education’s discourse toward private tutoring – which until that point had been criminalized and stigmatized – in reality the old discourse no longer aligned with the State’s other policies in terms of prioritizing economic considerations over other equally (if not more) important dimensions such as the moral and educational dimensions of the issue.
In November 2021, the year before the draft law was submitted by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance had called on those involved in private tutoring activities to go to their nearest tax office in order to notify it of the private tutoring practice, whether or not they had an existing tax file, and possibly open a new tax file to avoid applying the provisions of the Income Tax Law and the Tax Procedures Law. However, this circular raised a great deal of confusion. An earlier statement made by Said Fouad, an adviser to the head of the Tax Authority, stated: “Notifying the police station of the private tutoring activity and opening a tax file is not a legal basis for legalizing the status of private tutoring centers.” This statement begged the question of how taxes could be paid for an illegal activity and added to the general confusion over the legal status of private tutoring. However, these statements were revealing of the State’s logic: counselor Fouad had stated that private tutoring would be held accountable under the Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises Law No. 152 of 2020 or the Income Tax Law No. 91 of 2005, and likened dealing with private tutoring to dealing with seized drugs: “The drug dealer is subject to income tax. The seized drugs are also subject to taxation, as the Tax Authority charges him as a financier practicing an activity, even if the activity is illegal, and this does not mean that the State permits the practice of drug trafficking, as this is another detail that belongs to the Ministry of Interior.” Thus, illegal drugs can be taxed without being legalized, and the same would hold true for private tutoring. The Ministries of Education and Finance viewed private tutoring as a source of wasted income that should be exploited for the public good and to fill the shortfall in the State’s funding needs.
The new vision for legalized private tutoring called for several discourses to support and legitimize it. One such discourse called for the integration of the informal economy into the formal economy; the informal economy posed significant risks to the formal sector – in terms of unequal competition as a result of the financial and administrative burdens borne by the formal sector and its inability to benefit from the high rate of returns achievable by the informal sector – and to the State in terms of the loss of an important source of tax revenues and national income. Discourses opposed to this vision, based in opposition to the privatization of education and the commodification of science, viewing the right to education as a public good, have clashed with the official narrative in public discourse and policy arenas.
Within this framework, this paper is divided into two sections. The first section details the discursive alliances that support the Ministry of Education’s vision, and the second section deals with public policy battles where discourses that oppose the authority’s version clash with discourses in support of it.
Discursive Alliances in Support of the Authority
When the ministry announced its proposal to legalize private tutoring centers, many academics, education experts, and media professionals reacted in support through opinion articles and statements to various media outlets. These discourses were dominated by practical, pragmatic, and economic considerations of efficiency and effectiveness as a justification for supporting the idea of legalization. On one hand, legalization was promoted as a mechanism for generating sources of income both for the State – through taxes – and for the citizens for whom these centers provide employment opportunities. On the other, there was hope that legalization would be a more effective policy to deal with private tutoring than its predecessor, which had failed to eradicate it and instead had resorted to regulation as an alternative to subjecting it to control, supervision, and accountability.
A public policy specialist pointed out that the minister’s logic was supported by a trend in the field of public policy that argued that legalizing and regulating an illegal commodity or activity is better than continuing to criminalize it: criminalization may result in consequences that complicate the original issue, such as the example of the US Prohibition in the 1920’s where outlawing all alcohol simply led to a robust black market and organized gangs to protect and profit from it. Thus, this specialist agreed with the minister that private tutoring centers are a market that needs to be regulated and monitored, especially in light of the current exploitative practices that provoke classist tendencies. He stated that they are not a black market, as the minister believes, but rather a parallel market to formal education that operates openly and competitively. This indicated greater challenges for the government beyond just regulating the private tutoring market, including developing an integrated system to reform the education system in terms of teacher training, school reform, evaluation systems, and curricula.
Some educational experts – including Dr. Buthaina Abdel Raouf, an educational expert with a PhD in of education philosophy, and Dr. Assem Hegazy, a Professor at the Faculty of Education at Cairo University – argued that although they do not support any form of privatization of education, reject the idea of outsourcing management to private companies, and agree that legalization means legitimizing bad conditions, it can be accepted as a temporary solution due to the impossibility of eliminating private lessons. Thus, reality dictates the idea of trying new policies instead of those followed for decades, in an attempt to control the randomness of private lessons and make them subject to the ministry’s control and accountability. With the State’s proceeds from taxes on the money spent on private lessons, the ministry will be able to develop schools in rural areas and villages, build new schools in new cities, maintain and renovate educational buildings, and hire new teachers to address the shortage of teachers. Dr. Hassan Shehata, Professor of Education at Ain Shams University, described the legalization proposal as “realistic and wise”; it would ease the financial burdens on parents because the ministry would set the fees for private lessons in proportion to their abilities, as well as provide serious educational oversight of the centers and their activities to protect students from any activities that are harmful, especially those practiced by “behind-the-wall” (bir al-salam) centers, low quality and informally improvised classes that operate in parallel to classes run by school teachers in local neighbourhoods.
Several members of parliament (MP) have also stated their support for legalizing private tutoring centers for the same reasons as the minister and educational experts: the importance of the State obtaining its right to the lost tax revenue from private tutoring and using it to improve educational services and pay teachers’ wages and salaries. MP Yasser Omar, the deputy of the Planning and Budget Committee, pointed out that legalization represents a new, more realistic idea that avoids the policing through prosecution of previous policies that did not work for 30 years, and that informal teaching will gradually end automatically within a few years when students have been exposed to the developed curriculum from kindergarten to the preparatory stage.
Some owners of private tutoring centers agreed that being legalized would be good for them, as it would protect them from legal accountability and closure campaigns by the Ministry of Interior; such actions have led parents and some teachers to form home groups at a higher price, hurting the family budget. They agree with the ministry that legalization would put an end to inflated lesson prices. They have also pointed out another issue: employment, and the contribution of these centers to reducing unemployment. As one of them said, “these centers are helping many people support their families.” Hence, other harm could occur if the centers are closed, and it is better to legalize them.
In the same context, some private tutors believe that legalization is a step in the right direction, because government oversight will limit the spread of noneducators and nonspecialists in education who are hired by these centers. As long as there is supervision and control, the centers can increase opportunities for hardworking teachers and create a benefit for the students and the educational process.
Public Policy Battles
In contrast to the economic discourse supporting the policy of legalizing private tutoring centers, human rights and educational discourses have emerged against the privatization of education and the commodification of science. They invoke the right to education and the importance of making it available to all citizens fairly and without discrimination. They also stress the State’s role in providing educational services and the important educational and developmental role of schools in socialization and building a civilized and advanced society.
These discourses were embodied in the statements of many media professionals, education specialists, parents, and owners of private tutoring centers themselves; they argued against the ministry’s proposal and its supporting discourses in various public arenas such as newspapers, talk shows, and social media. This debate also extended to the policy atrium, mainly embodied in the Education and Scientific Research Committees (ESRC) in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are also attended by the deans of several educational faculties. This is in addition to the narrow policy atrium of specialized scientific journals, where the feasibility of legalizing private tutoring centers versus abolishing and criminalizing them was discussed among academics and experts.
The Public Sphere
Many media professionals, educators, specialists in education affairs, and parents expressed their strong opposition to the legalization proposal, considering it a surrender by the government to this phenomenon and a death certificate for public schools. Opponents clashed with and refuted the arguments put forward by the ministry and those in favor of its proposal.
Parents stated that they are forced to resort to private lessons out of fear for their children’s academic prospects, given the deteriorating educational system in schools; they are afraid that legalization will lead to an increase in the prices of private lessons, rather than a decrease, as the owners of private tutoring centers will increase rates to cover their newly imposed taxes. Parents demanded that a solution be found to end private centers, as they constitute a significant burden on the family’s income. They urge the ministry to instead come up with a plan to develop and improve public education and to revive public schools.
Some owners of private tutoring centers are also skeptical about the feasibility of this policy. Although they agree that they will be subject to educational supervision, they question the ministry’s ability to subject all centers to legalization and tight control, given their very large number and their spread through all governorates and villages in Egypt.
Journalist and TV presenter Amr Adeeb attacked the minister’s proposal, arguing that it was an announcement of the end of schools as an educational institution and an admission of the ministry’s failure to confront the issue of private centers over the past 30 years. Adeeb denounced the minister’s tendency to turn the ministry into a rentier institution that generates income at the expense of education. He asked what would happen if the same logic were generalized to other service ministries such as health and the interior, described the matter as catastrophic, and argued that the proposal is unconstitutional because it violates the constitutionally stipulated right to free education; legalizing these centers and assigning reinforcement groups to private companies means that education will not be available to those who are unable to afford it.
Some educational experts and specialists in education believe that the ministry’s move toward privatization, in all its variations and formations, will only lead to further deterioration and possibly collapse of the situation. Dr. Magdy Hamza argued that the minister’s statements are purely investment-oriented, aiming to exploit the “47 billion Egyptian pound [approximately US$992 million] private tutoring business” to increase his ministry’s income. He strongly refuted this, explaining that students’ futures should not be measured by money, and likened the legalization of private tutoring centers to the legalization of drug trafficking, as both are ruining the minds of Egypt’s students. He pointed out that if the ministry grants teaching licenses to the owners of private tutoring centers, who may not be teachers, it will give the opportunity for more noneducators to take advantage of loopholes when entering the profession, similar to what happened in the past, when 80% of those working in private tutoring centers were not teachers and had neither the expertise in teaching nor the educational methods used to manage students. In addition, in exchange for the revenue that the ministry aims to obtain from legalizing the centers, there will be a waste of the money spent by the State on the policies pursued by former Minister Tarek Shawky to develop education and eliminate private lessons, which amounted to 8 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately US$169 million).
The experts pointed out that instead of legalizing the status of private tutoring centers and seeking to mobilize resources as a branch of the Ministry of Finance and the Tax Authority to fill the budget deficit, new allocations would be invested in schools and used for hiring teachers (thus reducing unemployment and pumping money into the economy), criminalizing private lessons and closing these centers, and developing a comprehensive development plan to improve teachers’ skills, educational services, student attendance, and strengthen school groups so that public schools become more attractive to students.
Regarding the State’s inability to provide high-quality educational services in terms of building and developing schools and hiring more teachers, Samia Abdullah, a public school principal, raised the issue of political will on a talk show. She said that, if it were present, the State would provide financial allocations as it did for the development of other sectors, such as transportation. She argued that the proposal is a surrender by the ministry to the interest groups led by the owners of private tutoring centers.
The Policy Atrium
The House of Representatives and its ESRC represented a less public but more powerful and influential arena for discussion and debate on the policy of legalizing private tutoring centers. Many parliamentarians –independents and representatives of political parties – have expressed their rejection of the bill in its entirety, prompting members of the House ESRC to request a briefing and interrogation of the Minister of Education.
Opponents of the bill argue that legalizing private tutoring centers is an abandonment of the State’s roles in supporting and controlling the educational process in public schools on the one hand and in providing and managing educational services on the other. This proposal would increase the financial pressure on parents and put them at the mercy of the companies that manage them, “which could turn education into a commodity that only those who have the money can buy”.
MP Jehan al-Bayoumi, a member of the House ESRC, stated: “The proposal to legalize private lessons to control these centers and the nature of those who teach in them is completely rejected by the members of the Education Committee, and the committee seeks to support the role of schools and attract students to them, rather than helping students avoid them.” In a briefing request MP Alaa Essam of the Partisan Youth Coordination submitted, he explained that instead of legalizing the status of private tutoring centers – which reduce the educational process to memorization and rote learning – attention must instead be paid to the regularity of the educational process in schools as the primary place for students’ learning, socializing, developing their personalities, and improving their skills in sports, culture, and the arts. In this way Egypt would ensure that it is “building a generation capable of implementing the State’s strategy for development and progress”.
MPs from the Future of Watan Party and the Egyptian Democratic Party expressed their categorical rejection of the tax collection and the State income benefits used to justify the bill, since it is the parents who would actually bear this cost, not the teachers or center owners. They further noted that whatever the amount of this collection, it would never equal the right to education, and those who will be most affected are the people of villages and hamlets who cannot afford to pay the cost of private lessons.
They also agreed with the education experts who argue that legalization also means wasting all the money spent on developing the education system that aimed to eliminate the phenomenon of private lessons during the era of Minister Shawky. They then went further to argue that this would lead to the death of the teaching as a profession, because legalization will lead to the legitimization of teaching by the many noneducators already working in these centers.
Narrower Policy Arenas
In a narrower, more specialized arena, academics have debated how to deal with private tutoring centers through academic studies based on field and comparative studies. Although these studies preceded the minister’s draft law, they reflect the same arguments for and against the idea of legalization that have already been discussed.
Several studies have indicated that countries vary in dealing with the phenomenon of private tutoring, from every tactic including legalizing, regulating, encouraging, ignoring, or prohibiting them. A country’s chosen stance toward one of these policies depends on its context in terms of the strength of its government and its ability to control the phenomenon, the extent of the spread of the phenomenon, and its negative and positive repercussions.
As for the Egyptian case, many studies agree that the reasons for the spread of private lessons as a parallel educational system or alternative to formal education, rather than merely complementing it, is largely due to the low quality of public education in terms of: poor teaching, low student achievement, inadequate school infrastructure, high class density, low teacher skills, and lack of teacher motivation as a result of poor salaries. These issues are exacerbated due to the State’s disproportionate spending allocations, given what would be required to fix these issues, which are in part due to the State’s changing role in many sectors including education and the pressures it suffers as a result.
When considering how to confront the phenomenon of informal private education in Egypt, one study estimated the taxes that could be collected from legalized private lessons for high school students would be approximately 1 billion Egyptian pounds (approximately US$21.1 million) per year. Despite this, the study nevertheless recommended continuing to combat private centers in accordance with the principles of “removing harm” and “preventing evils before bringing benefits”, assuming that a set of measures could be designed and followed to address the root causes. Among the proposals made by studies to rationalize the phenomenon of private lessons are adherence to the constitutionally specified spending ratio for education, which should not be less than 4% of GNP; budget allocations to improve the wage and salary structures of teachers, establish new schools, and develop existing schools; attention to the quality of education by focusing on skills instead of tests and changing the examination system, especially at the secondary school level; and the need to activate a strict accountability system to curb any violations of regulations and laws.
Conclusion
This paper aimed to address the discursive alliances that have emerged around the policy of legalizing private tutoring in Egypt to show how certain policies gain the legitimacy that supports their implementation, and how, in turn, opposing discourses can emerge that engage and refute the arguments of supporting discourses to delegitimize these policies by engaging with them through multiple policy battles. The paper argues that the policy arena is the most powerful and influential but does not deny that it is also influenced by the debates in the public sphere and the narrow academic arenas. After the MPs’ strong rejection of the proposal, the draft law was rejected and the minister withdrew it from Parliament, reversing course and announcing that his proposal to legalize private tutoring centers was only intended to spark community dialogue and not a decision to be implemented immediately.
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The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.
