Enrollment in primary education and cognitive achievement in Egypt, change and determinants

The research discussed in this paper added information on students, households, schools, and cognitive achievement from the Ministry"s school database to the survey data, and then used these materials to investigate the determinants of achievement and enrollment in primary schools over the last decade. The paper finds that primary education in Egypt in the last few years has been characterized by stagnant or declining initial enrollment, declining completion rates, and low -- and seemingly decreasing -- cognitive achievement. This is so in spite of the fact that a major nationwide drive to reform basic education was started about five years ago. The socioeconomic context of education seems to be impeding the reform. In fact, the socioeconomic variables play a much more important role in explaining primary education parameters than do school variables. Moreover, the truly remarkable finding of this study is that none of the school variables came out as statistically significant determinants of completion of primary education.