primary education and from 43 to 75 per cent in preparatory and secondary
education (World Bank 2001: 284).
The problems of public education in Egypt today can be summarized as
follows:
• Although school attendance has been compulsory in Egypt for decades, the
adult (fifteen years and older) illiteracy rate is relatively high, particularly
among women (1998: total – 46.5 per cent; women – 58 per cent; men – 35
per cent; ibid.: 274). According to a 1992 UNICEF study one-fifth of all
Egyptian children had never attended school and about 30 per cent of the
rest were drop-outs. The most frequent reason why children stayed away
from school was the poverty of the parents, who could not afford the costs
of school uniforms and textbooks. Moreover, children from the poorer popu-
lation usually help support their families with some kind of work in the
informal sector and are therefore unable to attend school. Although children
under fourteen years of age are not allowed to work regularly in Egypt, 10
per cent of children aged ten to fourteen did so in 1999 (World Bank 2001:
278).