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Report: 17m illiterates in Egypt

March 4, 2019 at 12:12 am

An illiterate Egyptian woman waits for the officials at a voting station as they look for her name at a school at the populous Cairo district of Boulaq on 26 March 2007 [CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/Getty Images]

There are 17 million illiterates in Egypt, 25.7 percent of whom lie in the age group of 15 years old or above, the chairman of the state-run General Authority for Adult Education announced yesterday.

Ashour Amri’s remarks came during a parliament meeting, which discussed the implementation updates of the state so-called “2030 Strategy.” The Egyptian parliamentarian Sylvia Nabil headed the session which was attended by some officials from several ministries.

During the meeting, Amri explained that his authority aimed at reducing the country’s illiteracy rate by two million students every year. “Most of the involved parties have not been able to achieve the results agreed during the first half of the financial year 2018-19,” he pointed out.

“There are 120,000 illiterate students out of a million across the country,” the official noted.

The meeting was also reported to have discussed the higher education ministry’s “newly-proposed model of university hospitals, as well as the Supreme Council of Universities’ plan to establish the hospitals during the financial year 2019-20.”

READ: Egypt fourth highest illiteracy rate in Arab world