by Marwa Yahya

HURGHADA, Egypt, Dec. 18 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian government has started its first steps to build new educational system for the country based on innovation instead of memorization, said Education and Technical Minister.

"The old education system is like a building about to collapse," Tarek Shawki said at an educational conference which started on Monday.

The two-day conference is being organized by the immigration, education and higher education ministries attended by 28 Egyptian scientists and experts and 11 related entities.

There are 22 million students in Egypt, 55,000 government-run schools and about 1.2 million teachers and employees working in education, according to official statistics.

"The old educational system in Egypt is not good, and should be changed to build better generations," Hany el-Kateb, a member of the consultancy council of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told Xinhua.

Developing the education could not happen in one day. The country is working on many aspects including raising the awareness of the students, teachers and parents, el-Kateb added.

"The government is firm on upgrading the education system as a national responsibility," he added.

"Egypt is seeking to develop a system of education that qualifies citizens, especially young people, to local and global labor market opportunities," said a speech, which was read out on behalf of Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli at the conference.

The government is moving to develop and modernize the education in Egypt as the old system only relies on memorization that no more suits Egypt's 2030 sustainable development strategy, Madbouli said.

He reiterated the new education system will be linked to technology.

"Upgrading education is a national project that aims at building a generation capable of keeping abreast of the developments around the world," he added.

Shawki described developing the education system in Egypt as a "battle" for serving the citizens, and creating new generations that could cope with the modern life needs.

He explained the new system will not only seek collecting grades that qualify the students for a seat in university. It will rather focus on achieving balanced development of intellect, virtue and body.

The new curricula have been provided for foundation stages and primary schools to qualify the children for studying different subjects based on general knowledge and active learning besides Arabic and English languages.

Some 128,000 teachers are being trained to adjust the new system in 2018.

Since Egypt announced its new education system (2018-2030), and its position in the world education quality index has been improved from 137 to 100.

"There are various challenges that face the educational system. The toughest is the private tutoring, as 58 percent of students in Egypt depend on private lessons due to the large number in one class (could exceed seventy students)," Ahmad Adel, professor of methodology in Cairo University told Xinhua.

"Lack of skilled teachers is also a big challenge," Adel said, explaining that teachers within the national system take very low salaries and resort to increase their income by giving private tutoring.

However, he said the new education system has improved the old curriculum that was bombarded with a lot of unnecessary information to memorize.

He added the new system has similar characteristics to the international system that injects collaborative work among students, and changed the system to thinking and creating.

Sisi, on Sept. 19, said he would personally monitor the progress of the new system by visiting lots of schools.

"If we succeed in developing and improving our educational system, our country will move to a higher and better level," the president said.

The Egyptian government has signed a loan of 500 million U.S. dollars this year with the World Bank to reform the state school system over five years.

The loan will be spent on expanding qualified kindergarten education for 500,000 children, creating 500,000 jobs for teachers, and making over 1.5 million digital-learning facilities available to educators and students.