Tag: schools

Students and teachers alike skip first day of school

Posted on By 3arabawy

From the Daily News Egypt:

The new academic year got off on the wrong foot on Saturday as teachers and students decided to take the day off.
A shortage of school books and lack of preparation at the schools completed the picture, though on the bright side smoothly-flowing traffic put Cairenes relatively at ease.
This is arguably the result of a call by the Kefaya movement to boycott the first day of school, to “make Sept. 20 a day for peaceful protest against policies of humiliation and degradation.”
George Ishaq, founder and former coordinator of the Kefaya movement, considers the strike a success. He sees it as “a response to the worsening situation of the education scene by the failed government policies.”
“The peaceful strike was successful and its effect was notable in the relatively smooth traffic yesterday [Saturday],” Ishaq told Daily News Egypt.
“Elementary students went to school but middle and high school students didn’t go. In addition many teachers didn’t attend the first day of classes in protest at the implementation of the new teachers’ law,” added Ishaq, referring only to public schools.

In related news, the Dessouq teachers’ sit-in was aborted by police intervention, according to Kareem el-Beheiry, while protests and sit-ins were reported in Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile Delta.

Schools reject enrollment papers of Bahai children

Posted on By 3arabawy

Sarah Carr reports…

Local schools are denying Baha’is the right to enroll their children, five months after an Egyptian court recognized the right of members of the minority religion to leave the religious affiliation field on birth certificates and ID cards blank.
Adel Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) — which brought the case that was ruled on in January — says that schools are refusing to accept personal identity documents printed on paper.
Egypt recently replaced handwritten personal identity documents printed on paper with computerized ones, but the Ministry of Interior has reportedly been stalling on issuing them for Baha’is.
While under the system involving paper documents the religious affiliation field on birth certificates and ID cards could be left blank, a 2006 Supreme Administrative Court decision held that Baha’is had to either list themselves as Muslim, Christian or Jew (the only religions recognized in Egypt) or be denied the official documents necessary for them to access state services such as education and healthcare.
The effect of the policy was to force Baha’is to commit fraud by falsely listing a religious denomination in order to obtain the documents necessary for them to open bank accounts, apply for jobs and enroll in school.
The Administrative Court, which overturned this verdict in January, stated that even though Baha’is do not belong to one of the three religions officially recognized by the state, they enjoy the right to refuse to identify themselves as one of these religions. It also said that members of the Bahai faith have the right to access state services.
The Interior Ministry, however, has been slow in implementing the court decision and producing identity cards with a blank religious affiliation field.