Amira El-Noshokaty encounters three generations of thanawiya amma Crying students complaining about difficult exams, parents praying for their children to score highly, and the perusal of news headlines concerning thanawiya amma (TA, the Egyptian secondary-school certificate) are staples of Egyptian family life. The ghoul, sum of all fears, bottleneck, is how most Egyptians regard TA, in which scores determine college enrolment and hence thousands of students' professional careers. TA, a few decades ago, was not the same nightmare as Nadia Abaza, a housewife and mother of three, who witnessed the evolution of TA over three decades, recalls. "I received my TA back in 1967. I was already married with a child, so I registered in a school designed for those who want to work mainly from home." She would attend class from 9am to noon and study at her mother's until her husband picked her up at 3pm. Throughout her one-year TA, she didn't engage in private tuition; she appreciated her teachers; and, scoring 45 per cent -- five per cent lower than the minimum average required to pass now -- she not only passed, but she attended the institute of her choice. How has all this changed? "Based on my children's experience, I can see the problem is not with TA itself but rather with the huge drop in the quality of education between my generation and theirs." Low salaries have compromised teaching skill, she says; huge numbers of students have further complicated the situation, with faculties demanding higher grade averages -- to the point when even 95 per cent is often not enough to enter the faculty of your choice, and bright students are expected to score over 100 per cent. It has also spawned the monster that is private tuition, a way for both teachers to supplement their income and parents to ensure that their children find a place at university, prompting the collapse of the system, which has been a rather individual affair, as dependent on the whims of the minister in office as it is on the law, and in constant flux over the years. The first TA was granted in Egypt in 1887, when 45 out of a total of 62 students passed, but it wasn't until the great statesman Saad Zaghloul's term as minister of education that it was split into arts and science sections, encouraging some 700 students to enrol in 1906; later minister Ahmed Hekmat's decision in 1967 to give students who failed a particular subject a second chance -- the mulhaq, or second sitting -- that the number reached 160,000; but the system was challenged again under Mohamed Helmi, who allowed no more than two mulhaqs a year, split science into maths and science and almost made vocational education start in preparatory school -- a plan Abaza sees as the only thing that could have saved the educational system: to make the primary school certificate determine whether a student should enter secondary education or a vocational-technical career, with achievers in the latter having the choice to skip a year of the four-year university programme of their choice. "This," Abaza says, "would have taken the edge off TA, with more people opting for technical education guaranteeing a job and as much social status as a university graduate." The plan was only in operation for a few months, when Helmi was replaced and it was duly abolished, never to be reintroduced. Manal Ahmed, Abaza's daughter, witnessed TA during the 1980s -- an altogether different stage of evolution. Ahmed, a mathematics-science candidate, graduated from TA twice: the first time, she caught the measles one month before sitting the exams, and this resulted in an average of 60 per cent; this, she managed without the benefit of private tuition, but she decided to try again. In 1983, with no measles and a few private tutors -- their role consisted largely in facilitating the switch from German, the language of her education, to Arabic -- she scored 83 per cent. Unlike the German system, TA turned out to be based on rote learning, and she was only able to enrol as an engineering student in another, less populous governorate -- as per the strictures of the Enrolment Coordination Office (ECO): "I was only 0.5 per cent away from Cairo University; a colleague whose score was lower got a place in Cairo just because his father was professor, and there was some kind of quota for professors' children." She could have relocated to Cairo after a year at Mansoura University, where she enrolled despite her parents' protestations hoping to study architecture, but she found the whole thing too hectic and switched back to arts in the end. As an assistant manager at a German company, Ahmed has no regrets -- many of her architect friends have been unemployed -- but she says, "I think the ECO should really make geographic proximity more of a priority; it might also help if different faculties have specific prerequisites." The 1990s were an era unto itself, largely because of Minister Fathi Sorour, whose plan stretched the final grade over the exams of two years instead of one, making it easier for many a student to enter the college of their choice. Later Hussein Bahaaeddin intervened, introducing "improvement" exams -- a kind of pass- oriented mulhaq intended to raise the overall grade, which by default raised ECO requirements. In the meantime parents questioned the TA grading system, demanding that exam papers be marked again and again. Mona Ahmed, Abaza's youngest daughter, therefore took TA exams in the school years 1995-96 and 1996-97 against a backdrop of confusion and legal battles. What Ahmed appreciated under the new system was the ability to choose subjects, not only sections; what she didn't was the fact the ability to have up to two "improvement" sittings caused grades to skyrocket, with people scoring up to 98.5 per cent unable to enrol at the Faculty of Medicine. Ahmed herself scored 88, which enabled her to attend her choice of faculty: commerce; others, she recalls, scored up to 105 per cent. "This was unfair," she says. "A student who was brilliant at biology but not at other subjects could still not make it into medical school. On the other hand you could score 100 per cent and still have no preparation for medicine. I think all faculties should have admission exams, then TA would not be so scary..."
