The Power of Persistence: Education System ... - EQUIP123.net

had been working as an advisor on the EQUIP2 project was brought back to the
Ministry as the senior advisor. This confluence of events had two main beneficial
effects: a number of people who shared both experience and vision for reform
were brought together; and ERP, which had been working at both the national
and governorate level on planning and vision, acquired greater access to and
credibility with the senior levels of government. Over the next several years, the
progress in education reform was, by any historical comparison, extraordinary.
The government’s financial resource capacity and political will are generally viewed
as positively related to implementing reform (i.e., greater resources lead to more
extensive reform). In the case of Egypt, however, there was a negative relationship
between resources and reform efforts. That is, the political will of central authorities
to promote decentralization and community participation was, in part, influenced
by resource limitations. Indeed, this appears to be the case in earlier years when
the central authority pursued reform initiatives. 2 From the beginning of his
presidency, Mubarak inherited financial challenges, which escalated by the early
1990s. The Egyptian government’s financial resource capacity was enhanced,
but with significant restrictions on public expenditure, when it negotiated a
structural adjustment program to obtain a loan from the World Bank. These fiscal
challenges, exacerbated by an expansion of the education system, encouraged the
Mubarak government to experiment with laws and pilot projects aimed toward
decentralizing responsibilities (if not authority) and increasing community
participation during this period. Limitations in financial resources, however,
seem to be a relatively constant feature of the Egyptian scene, and thus cannot
help us to understand the significant increase in efforts toward decentralization
and community participation that occurred in the early years of the 21 st Century.
To understand the more recent spike in government activity we need to consider
another aspect of the political dimension, the role of civil society.
As in the case of financial resources, one might assume a positive relationship
between the degree of mobilization of civil society and the political will of central
authorities to promote reform. But in the case of Egypt, the relationship is a
negative one. That is, central authorities hesitated, despite financial incentives,
to foster decentralization and community participation in education because
the most organized and active segment of civil society were groups identified
as Islamist militants, with whom the government was engaged in conflict that
was often violent. Recall that Mubarak became president following Sadat’s
assassination, and encountered an increasingly violent struggle with Islamist
2 For example, the 1883 provincial councils statute, the 1939 technical zones decree, and the 1960 Local
Administrative Law (see Ibrahim and Hozayn, 2006)
SECTION 2: lESSONS fROM COUNTRY CASE STUdIES
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