The Administrative Court held, on Saturday, the first session to discuss a lawsuit applied by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, which demands the government raise expenditure on education up to the rate defined by the constitution, which is four per cent of the GDP. The EIPR is suing the president and other officials who it holds collectively responsible for this violation.

Article 19 of the Egyptian Constitution obliges the government to allocate four per cent of the GDP to expenditure on pre-university education. Moreover, the text said that this rate is a first step in it being raised gradually to the international standards.

However, the government went against the constitution allocating only 2.6 per cent of the GDP to education, both university and pre-university, which is lower than half of the rate defined by the constitution. To meet the constitution, the government has to add EGP 56.2 billion to the current budget of education which is worth of EGP 106.6 billion.

EIPR added that the decline of expenditure on education has reflected on the education quality. In Giza for example, the 2017/2018 annual report of the ministry of education showed that the per capita share did not exceed EGP 2,000 (less than $150). Accordingly, the average number of students per class increased from 35 in 2014 to 52 in 2017.