Organizational analysis of the Ministry of Education, Arab Republic of Egypt : the production, flow, and use of information in the decision-making process

The domains of problems that all ministries of education must resolve and that are analyzed in this study include: admission of students, selection and training of teachers and other personnel, construction of buildings and classrooms, supervision and management of schools, and development of curriculum. To facilitate the solution of these problems, each ministry develops an educational management information system (EMIS): a routine set of procedures for the generation of information needed to support operations and decisionmaking. The quality of the solutions that are developed is to some extent a function of the quantity and quality of the information that is produced, the timely distribution of that information, and the capacity of the various dependencies of the ministry to use it. The present study focuses on the description of the process of information production, distribution, and utilization in the execution of these routine but central administrative tasks in the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Egypt. The purpose of the research is to increase understanding of organizational factors in ministries of education that either contribute to or act against successful provision and use of information in the problem-solving cycle. A number of methodologies were employed to collect data for this research: interviews with MOE officials (42 altogether), personal observation by the resident advisor, and analysis of newspaper articles, MOE publications, previous studies by USAID, and trip reports by BRIDGES consultants. The study presents a description of the structure and functions of the various levels of the MOE and a discussion of the major issues confronting educators in Egypt: (1) overcrowded classrooms; (2) an information system that has little impact on decisionmaking; (3) the existence of a number of parallel data collection systems; (4) the lack of viable educational planning practices; (5) a rigid bureaucratic hierarchy and autocratic style of leadership; (6) the compartmentalized nature of MOE departments that leads to poor communication; and (7) the traditional problem in Egypt of isolation of rural areas from urban areas. The study concludes by proposing some approaches and possibilities for moving toward solution of these problems. (Author abstract)