Q: Can you introduce yourself?
A: A: I am Abduselam Abdella, one of the founders of the Faysal Community School. We opened in the academic year 2018-2019. Our school has three regular school branches and one technical school. Our main branch is Kafr Thazmos branch. This is where everything started. We currently have 1480 students. My position in the school as head of administration and finance. I am the director of the Kafr Thazmos branch.
Q: At the time of registration, did you have more applications than the number of students that you could actually take?
A: Of course, we needed to close the opportunities for application very soon because of the lack of space, especially in Al-Tagsin and the 6th of October branches. The criterium that we used was first come and first served.
Q: From the 1480 students, how many do you host in Kafr Thazmos branch?
A: Here we have 610 students, of those students 19 have not paid all their school fees.
Q: From those 19 what do you do?
A: We are not kicking them out. We always try to find a solution, maybe internal solutions as it would be flexible, allowing parents to pay in installments that fit their needs, or encouraging parents to pay, as well as external solutions that would be applying for support to CRS, also StARS, Save the Children or external individual donors that are willing to pay for the school fees of these children.
Q: You referred to external support, can you further elaborate on that?
A: For example, we can write a report stating that this student is really passing through a hard time and is not able to pay his school fees, so we can send this to different NGOs that might be able to help the family with financial support. This is the case with StARS. They pay around 50% of the school fees. It may differ from family to family according to their conditions. They have criteria. Then we also have the CRS providing 1.200 EgP to every refugee student every year. But you know those students that are not holding the blue or yellow card got money from the International Organization for Migration (IOM). And also PSTIC, Psycho-Social Services, and Training Institute in Cairo provided support. PSTIC came here but they give only psychological support, not financial support. And then for the furniture, we had Save the Children supporting us in the first year, and they provided us with around 100 desks and some tables. This was under a project called ‘opportunity project.’ The remaining costs are paid from school fees. [Editor: for more about PSTIC see the interview with Jok Marko]
Q. What do you think are the main barriers that Eritrean students face that Sudanese students might not face?
A: The Eritrean community faces a lot of problems. Most of the Eritreans are here without their passports and are living here as refugees, with the UNHCR card. When you got the blue card you automatically lose your passport, and not having a passport is challenging here. You cannot open, for example, a bank account without a passport. Even us, we do not have a bank account for our schools. Now with the recognition of the Sudanese Ministry of Education, this problem will be solved. This means that Eritrean refugees completely lose their relationship with the embassy. So when it comes to, for example, getting a birth certificate, it will be very hard, because you know many Eritreans come here without having a birth certificate. And most of our students here are Eritreans, 90% of them are.
Q: Can you confirm that if you are a foreigner and do the Sudanese curriculum, you are rejected at public universities in Egypt?
A: Yes, once you go to Wafidin you need to bring your identification documents. That is your passport or your blue card identification number, also your residence permit, and your birth certificate. If they see that you are not Egyptian, they will reject you if you are holding the diploma based on the Sudanese curriculum. This is a rule and law of Wafidin. I had a meeting with Wafidin last year complaining about this situation and the only solution that they gave us was that if a foreigner wants to enter a public university in Egypt the only available paths were taking the Egyptian curriculum, the international curriculum, or the national curriculum. They established this rule 3 or 4 years ago. I do not know why they changed that. At that time, Wafidin also suggested we would negotiate with the Sudanese embassy asking them to contact relevant Egyptian authorities. We tried but there was no way, so the Egyptian curriculum is the only way for Eritrean students to enter an Egyptian university. We met with the Sudanese Embassy and two times they said, there is a solution, we will find a solution, but it did not happen.
Q: Do you have any idea why the Ministry of Education in Khartoum decided to increase the cost of the senior 3 exams for non-Sudanese to 550$?
A: I have no idea. We even asked the Sudanese Embassy about that and they told us that they did not know it. Maybe they did not want to answer that question but I don’t know. We have a very good relationship with the Sudanese Embassy. We are the biggest school that hosts non-Sudanese refugees and displaced students. But it is so difficult to pay 550$. Last year, before the increase, 50 of our students took the Sudanese exam. This year only 11 students could afford to pay that price. Of those only 8 passed. That was so sad because they were academically prepared, they lost hope.
Q: From the total community schools under the Sudanese Embassy, how many learning centers would you catalog as the ones that are mainly Eritrean?
A: I would say in total around 10. Three in Faisal, one on the 6th of October. The total is not more than 10.
Q: Wafidin gave you the solution for doing the Egyptian curriculum, when did you introduce it?
A: Yes, they did. We introduced this last year. 27 of our students sat for the Egyptian national examination last year (2020-2021 academic year). 14 were from the English section at our school and 13 students sat the exam in Arabic.
Q. How many succeeded?
A: Since it was our first year with the Egyptian curriculum the success percentage of the students wasn’t that good, it was around 50% only. Several of those who succeeded joined universities here.
Q: What are the main barriers that you have encountered with the Egyptian curriculum?
A: Registration of the students is somehow difficult. They need a lot of official documents such as a birth certificate, their passport or the UN card number, and their residence permit. Most of the students do not have a birth certificate because they fled the country. And also in the first year, the school and the students lacked information about the Egyptian curriculum. Our teachers and students are used to the Sudanese curriculum because we have a long experience with it, but not with the Egyptian one. And the Egyptian curriculum is somehow complicated, it requires a lot of financial issues.
Q: You brought the Egyptian curriculum, how did you do that?
A: We register our schools under a public governmental school as distance online students. We also have support from the Ministry of Education, so we communicate to them our problems such as kids not having official documents such as a birth certificate. Registration is very expensive. In order to register them only, we pay a fee to the Ministry of Education through a public school, and then we pay an additional fee for each student, more than 4,500 EgP per student, this is only for registration. This is used for our Egyptian partner school and helps us with the Ministry of Education. And then we need to pay for the CRS paper, which is 700E gP. Students who are registered with the UNHCR need proof that they are enrolled at the Egyptian school. Students who are not registered at the UNHCR do not need this. We follow the Egyptian curriculum in 6th of October with seniors 1,2,3 and here, in the Kafr Thazmos branch, we just have senior 3. We have two departments, the Arabic department, and the English department. Here we have two curriculums in this branch, one for students who want to do the Sudanese senior 3 exams and those who want to do the senior 3 Egyptian exams.
Q: Why is it difficult to get a residence permit?
A: The thing is that there are many students who registered at the UNHCR and until now they still do not have their blue or yellow card. Without this, they cannot have a residence permit. Now after the Corona pandemic the average wait time is one year, and in our school, we have a family that has been waiting two years and a half without a residence permit.
Q: And what about their passports?
A: If you have a passport, the UNHCR will cancel your legal residence on it. That does not mean that you lose your passport, but you cannot use it anymore to travel.
Q: Does the school have a bank account?
A: No, nor the school, nor any of us, that is 99% of the refugees, do not have a bank account. If we want to buy something through the internet, we just contact people outside of Egypt with a bank account. We are in the process to open a bank account but just now. In the past, we needed the legal administration documents of the school. It was not until this year that the Sudanese Ministry of Education recognized our school. Earlier we could not start the process of opening it.
Q: Can you further elaborate on this recognition?
A: Before the Ministry of Education recognition we were only recognized by the Sudanese Embassy. But this year, from the beginning of the year, the Sudanese Ministry of Education approved all our branches. I know that there are 103 learning centers in Egypt, from those only 16 are recognized by the Sudanese Embassy and after that, the Sudanese Ministry of Education also recognized these 16. Two of these are schools in Alexandria, and the rest are here, in Cairo.
Q: How did you get the number 103?
A: Because we have a group called the Sudanese School Union group, with all the directors. From those 103, the ones that are not recognized by the Sudanese Embassy nor the Egyptian Ministry of Education, they need to make sure the children can do the exam. They just register them under the name of a community school that has approval. But now all those learning centers that did not get approval from the Egyptian Ministry of Education will be forced to close, maybe next year, for example, the CBO (Community Based Organization) in 6th of October has already closed its learning center service.
Q: And how are you going to benefit from the approval?
A: A lot of things. Now our school can contact any institution in Egypt, we can have a bank account. We can establish any partnership with any other Egyptian school, we can deal with people outside Egypt. The Sudanese Embassy was done the entire process. The people from the Ministry of Education in Khartoum came here to visit our school, and they just approved 16 from the total of 103 learning centers, and last year we got approval from the Egyptian Ministry of Education.
Q: Have you considered introducing the international curriculum regarding the problems and barriers that you have with the Egyptian curriculum?
A: Yes, before introducing the Egyptian curriculum, we thought and even tried to use the international one. We contacted an international school that is providing the international curriculum. This Egyptian school is called the African Egyptian school. It is St. Joseph, we had a lot of meetings with many principals but it did not work. We asked them, especially for cooperation such as teachers training in how to give the curriculum, registering our students for exams, but they told us that our students were too many and that this was impossible.
