Minister of Education Restructures Thanaweya Amma System in Egypt

The Minister of Education and Technical Education, Mohamed Abdel Latif, has announced the ministry's plan for the 2024/2025 academic year, which begins on September 21.

The minister revealed a major overhaul of the Thanaweya Amma secondary education curriculum to ensure it is less overwhelming for students. Under the new system, first-year secondary students will study six subjects instead of the ten required last year.

The revised curriculum introduces an integrated sciences course, replacing the separate chemistry and physics classes. Additionally, the second foreign language—French or German—will be categorised as a pass/fail subject and will not count towards the total score.

Geography will be removed from the first-year syllabus and will be offered as a specialised subject for the literary track in the following year. As a result, first-year secondary students will study Arabic, the first foreign language, history, mathematics, integrated sciences, and philosophy and logic. Religious education will also be a pass/fail subject and geology, and psychology will be excluded from the total score in secondary education.

For the upcoming academic year, second-year secondary students will study six subjects instead of eight as in the previous year. These subjects will be Arabic, the first foreign language, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics.

The minister stated that the redesign of the curriculum was based on scientific principles and reviewed by specialized experts. Additionally, a community dialogue was conducted involving experts, teachers, educational administrators, parent-teacher councils, and several media specialists focused on education.