The Thanaweya Amma (high school) final exams for the academic year 2021/22 will be postponed for two weeks, starting on 26 June instead of 11 June and ending on 21 July, Minister of Education Tarek Shawki said in a press conference on Wednesday, without mentioning the reason behind the postponement.
Exams for subjects whose scores are not added to students’ total grades – including religious education, national education, economics, and statistics – will be held on 20-21 June, Shawki said.
The Thanaweya Amma exams will be in paper form and will be answered on bubble sheets, Shawki said.
Tests will comprise multiple-choice questions and will not have any essay questions, which will allow for fully electronic exam grading, he added.
Students will not be allowed to enter the exam halls with textbooks or tablets, the minister said.
The exams for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) high schools are scheduled to take place from 20 June till 23 July.
As for visually-impaired students, Thanaweya Amma exams will be conducted from 20 June till Tuesday 19 July, Shawky added.
Final exams for grade 10 and 11 students, or students of the first and second stages of high school, will be held in morning and evening shifts and will be taken in both paper and electronic formats, Shawki said.
Final exams for grade 10 will be held from 11 to 25 May, while exams for grade 11 students will start on 12 May and end on 26 May.
Egyptian students abroad will be able to take exams through an electronic platform provided by the ministry starting 7 May, Shawki said.
Students abroad who cannot access the platform can print the exam and send it back via email to the relevant exam monitoring committee.
This does not apply to students enrolled in schools that teach the Egyptian curriculum in some countries, known as the Egyptian track schools, Shawki said.
Students abroad who wish to join the Egyptian education system after returning to Egypt will have to take placement tests, he added.
Over the past few years, Egypt has introduced changes to the Thanaweya Amma exams, with the aim of eventually replacing the decades-long system of memorising for tests. The new system will involve student-centred teaching and competency-based learning.
The passing rate for the Thanaweya Amma exams in the 2020/2021 academic year — which was attended by roughly 650,000 students — was 74 percent, a significant decrease from the 81.5 percent of the previous year.
As a result, the minimum grades required for admission into Egyptian public universities for the 2021/22 academic year — including the most desirable faculties, such as medicine and engineering — saw a considerable drop for the first time in decades.