Complaints from parents in Egypt have escalated regarding difficulties in the curricula of the basic (pre-university) stages of education, after extensive amendments made to them by the Ministry of Education this year, with the start of their application to students with the start of the new academic year on September 12, amid demands to ease the curricula.
A member of the House of Representatives from the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, Sanaa Al-Saeed, submitted a parliamentary question addressed to the Minister of Education and Technical Education, Mohamed Abdel Latif, regarding “parents’ complaints about the difficulty and intensity of primary school curricula, and the high study loads and assessments imposed on children.”
The representative said that parents’ complaints have increased regarding the size and difficulty of the curriculum, in addition to the large number of assignments and assessments, which require long hours of studying daily, which has made the matter turn into a great pressure on the children and their families, and affects the time for rest, play, activities, and the child’s social life.
She pointed out that a number of parents expressed their fears that these constant pressures would lead to children’s aversion to education, instead of education being a means of building their personalities and developing their abilities and love of knowledge.
The Egyptian Minister of Education confirmed, during a recent meeting with Egyptian media professionals and journalists, that his ministry had succeeded in developing 94 curricula at the various levels of basic education, in addition to developing 160 curricula in the current academic year, including the “Egyptian Baccalaureate” curricula, noting that this development “was done without financial cost to the ministry.”
From time to time, parents in Egypt complain about the difficulties of the curricula, but this year the complaints escalated, and they focused more on the mathematics curricula for the third grade of primary school, which the Egyptian Ministry of Education developed through a partnership with the Japanese side, and included amending the mathematics curricula for the first, second, and third grades, in addition to developing the science curricula for the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades.
Curricula above the level of students
“The crisis in the new curricula remains that they are above the level of the students, and if we look at the mathematics curriculum for the primary grades, it was placed on arithmetic foundations that the student was supposed to have learned in the previous grades. This did not happen, and therefore the arithmetic operations remain complex for the student, and there is no preparation for the students on how to deal with them,” as Shaima Samir, the mother of one of the students, confirmed on her Facebook page.
In conjunction with the escalation of complaints, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly held a meeting, on Monday, with the Minister of Education, Mohamed Abdel Latif, and the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Abdel Aziz Qanswa, in which he demanded “clarification of everything related to the availability of education and the quality of the educational process, in a way that ensures that the issues that concern Egyptian families are clearly addressed.”
Meanwhile, a mother of five students in different stages of education called for easing the new curricula to keep them in line with the students’ mental levels, and providing teachers with the ability to teach the new courses and recognize their educational dimensions, noting that students face a lot of pressure, and this leads to increased reliance on “private lessons,” not dispensing with them.
Confusing adjustments
She added in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that the introduction of continuous amendments to the curricula caused confusion among students, and this led to difficulties in adapting to them, noting that the complaints focus on the difficulties of the “mathematics” subject for the third grade of primary school, in addition to complaints about the intensive scientific subject in the subjects of science and social studies in the primary stage as well, as well as the new “baccalaureate” curricula, especially the “business administration” and “programming” curricula.
On the other hand, the Egyptian Ministry of Education downplayed the impact of the curriculum difficulties, and the Assistant Minister of Education for Curriculum Development, Dr. Akram Hassan, confirmed in television statements on Monday that “the difficulty felt by students in the third grade of primary school curricula is apparent and temporary, and results from the transition from the old traditional methods to a modern method.” He expects that these complaints will disappear completely within about a month, once students and teachers engage in the philosophy of learning.
Since the Egyptian Minister of Education disclosed his plan for the current academic year before the Senate (the second chamber of Parliament), the debate has not stopped over the challenges of expanding reliance on Japanese curricula in Egyptian public education, amid fears of poor returns on students in an environment accustomed to focusing on academic achievement, not on the activities that are considered a main input to the success of the “Japanese experiment.”
Professor of Educational Psychology at Cairo University, Dr. Assem Hegazy, believes that parents’ complaints are based on real difficulties in the curricula, pointing out that there must be a distinction between curricula that were prepared by Egyptian experts and had some problems and errors that were corrected, and translated foreign curricula such as the “Accounting” and “Programming” curricula for baccalaureate students, which do not find a qualified teacher to teach them.
He added in a statement to Asharq Al-Awsat that the “mathematics” curriculum for the third grade of primary school is taught to students who are not qualified to deal with it because it depends on problem-solving methods and critical thinking, and the Egyptian student’s peers in Japan were taught these curricula after prior qualification in previous years, indicating that the Japanese curriculum needs an integrated system that includes the appropriate school climate, the trained teacher, and the prepared student, which is something that is not available in Egyptian schools.
From his point of view, the solution that can alleviate the crisis now is for the Egyptian Ministry of Education to adopt the task of explaining the difficult curricula through videos that are broadcast to all schools so that students can benefit from them, and help teachers understand its philosophy, in addition to alleviating some of them, taking into account the application of the Japanese system of education to all curricula, and not specific curricula and leaving out others.
Tariq Abdel Rahman stands behind a small “pallet” in one of Omdurman’s markets, on which he sells household supplies. In another part of the market, his sister Mawada sells light foods, such as falafel, fava beans, spices, and snacks. At the end of the day, the two return with what they have earned to help their family, displaced from El Fasher, buy food and medicine.
Since the Rapid Support Forces took control of El Fasher in October 2025, the family does not know the fate of the father, Abdel Rahman Idris, a soldier, nor the fate of his son Idris. The mother, Rahma Adam, told Asharq Al-Awsat: “I have not received my husband’s salary yet, and we depend on Tariq’s work and the intermittent affection and support that comes to us from those around us.”
The family arrived in Khartoum carrying with them their concern for the missing people, and found themselves facing the burdens of housing, living, and treatment. in the beginning.
El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, had spent about 18 months under siege imposed by the Rapid Support Forces, amid repeated bombings and a severe shortage of food and medical care. In October 2025, the forces took control of the city, and residents fled through dangerous roads, while families were separated and lost contact with their members. Among those families is the Rahma family, which arrived in Khartoum without knowing the fate of the father and his son.
Rahma prepared falafel and spices and sold them to buy flour, sugar, soap, and other necessities. But she stopped working about a month ago after her health deteriorated.
She says: “My heart hurt, and when I saw a specialist in the city of Atbara, they told me that I had an enlarged heart muscle.” She adds that she received medications, but her condition worsened again, and she no longer had enough money to buy them. She hopes to travel to Cairo for treatment if her circumstances permit, but she says: “Currently we have almost nothing.”
According to a monitoring of the markets in February 2026, the value of the basket of minimum basic household expenses in Sudan amounted to about 515 thousand pounds per month (about 50 dollars). This is an estimate at the national level, and not an account of Rahma’s family’s expenses, but it shows the size of the cost of basic needs before adding treatment and transportation.
Price fluctuations make it more difficult to meet these needs. On September 22, Reuters quoted a shopper in Omdurman that the price of a liter of cooking oil rose within a week from 17,000 to 23,000 pounds. It quoted a worker in the city who earns about 500,000 pounds per month as having to work as a part-time driver to cover his expenses. His salary does not represent the average wage or income for Rahma's family, but it gives a picture of the price pressure on workers in the city.
Tariq goes out to the market in the morning and returns in the evening with whatever sales he can. He told Asharq Al-Awsat that his income is limited, but it has become an essential resource for the family after his mother’s illness: “Our main concern has become to work every day and save what we can until these circumstances pass.”
Mawaddah continues the work that her mother used to do, selling food and spices, then returning to help her at home and accompany her to the doctor. She says: “What we get is not enough to cover all our needs, but it helps us buy food and some necessities.” For her, work became “a means of survival and making ends meet” in the absence of a stable income.
As for their sister, Manal, she was in the third year in the Sociology Department at the Faculty of Arts at El Fasher University. She tried to continue her studies after moving the university to Omdurman, but the fare to return from the family’s place of residence was not available regularly. She says: “I want to complete my education, but the road fare has become competitive with the needs of food and my mother’s treatment for the little money available, so I dropped out of school.”
When the family arrived in Khartoum, neighbors provided them with clothes, sheets, beds, and some household utensils, helping them start their life in the place of displacement. But this assistance did not provide a continuous income. With Rahma stopping work, the children were faced with one question every morning: Are today’s sales sufficient for food at home and treatment for the mother?
Between a father and a son whose fate is unknown, a mother awaiting treatment, and a daughter who dropped out of university, the impact of the war appears in small daily details: a meal that must be provided, medicine that may be delayed in purchasing, and transportation fare that is not available. At the end of each day, the family returns with what they collected from the market, then prepares for a new attempt the next morning.
On Monday morning, drones likely belonging to the Rapid Support Forces bombed the Sports City, Shikan University College, and public facilities in the city of El Obeid, the capital of North Kordofan State in the west of the country, in the latest attack of its kind on the city. A military source said that a bombing targeted a sports stadium northwest of the city, killing one person and wounding ten others.
The spokesman for the North Kordofan state government, Jamaa Al-Mahdi Jamaa, said in a statement that the “Rapid Support Forces” marches targeted civil, educational and sports facilities, most notably the Sports City and Shikan University College, considering the attack an attack on citizens and their capabilities, and called on the international community and human rights organizations to document the attack and hold those responsible for it accountable.
On the other hand, the Rapid Support Forces said that their marches targeted weapons and ammunition stores inside the headquarters of the army’s Fifth Infantry Division, known as Al-Haganah, in addition to other military sites in Al-Obeid, claiming that they inflicted heavy losses on the army.
Attack on Gezira State
The attack on Al-Obeid came the day after a march targeted the “Umm Alila” fuel depots near Abu Haraz, about 20 kilometers northeast of the city of Wad Madani, the capital of Al-Jazeera State in central Sudan. At the time, Agence France-Presse reported that a drone hit the fuel tanks, while a witness reported that he saw flames rising from the fire site from a distance of about 3 kilometers.
The Gezira state government accused the Rapid Support Forces of carrying out the attack.
Al Jazeera State Radio and Television Corporation said that the bombing hit two gasoline tanks out of four tanks in the warehouse, noting that civil defense teams were able to control the fire without recording any deaths.
In a related context, what is known as the “Al-Jazeera Conference Authority” announced the fall of 3 drones in agricultural fields in the village of Wad Al-Barr Al-Khawalda, without clarifying the circumstances of their fall or whether they were shot down by air defenses. No military source referred to it among the marches that the armed forces announced.
Frequent attacks
The city of El Obeid has been subjected to repeated drone attacks for months, the frequency of which escalated during this September. On September 25, the state government said that an attack by Rapid Support Forces drones killed two people and injured 20 others, after it targeted a center for sheltering displaced people and civilian sites.
On the same day, the “Tasis” coalition, allied with the “Rapid Support Forces,” accused the Sudanese army of bombing the Al-Mazroub area with a drone, saying that the attack resulted in the death of 9 people and the injury of 24 others.
On September 20, local sources reported that 4 drones attacked Al-Obeid, targeting the army headquarters and the Ministry of Finance building. The guard of the College of Developmental and Technological Sciences in the city was also killed on September 9, as a result of drone bombing that damaged the college buildings, according to local sources.
The attacks spread to other areas, as at least 18 people were killed and 22 others were injured in an attack targeting Umm Rawaba Court on September 8. In the city of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, where the parallel “establishment” government is based, attacks were also recorded that were attributed to army marches.
Residents reported that one person was killed and his two children were injured in a strike that occurred on September 8, while local sources said that another attack targeted the headquarters of the Rapid Support Forces in the city on September 27, causing losses whose toll was not specified.
