Between 1976 and 1996, adult literacy rates in Egypt increased from 39.2 percent to 55.4 percent. However, enrollment ratios continue to improve more slowly. Poor rural households suffer the most, with 17.4 percent of children ages 6 to 11 years old out of school. Among the total population not enrolled in school, 1.6 million are girls, 1.3 million of whom reside in rural areas. A girl who was of primary school age in 1998 has an approximately 60% likelihood of enrolling in primary school, a 50% likelihood of completing primary school, and a 6% likelihood of completing secondary school - 2% if she lived in a rural area.
One of the greatest obstacles to increasing enrollment is the limited available physical infrastructure, and the financial constraints in meeting the demand for expanded formal school coverage. Problems with lack of classrooms are further compounded by varying levels in the quality of teaching available, high student to teacher ratios, and a national shortfall in the number of teachers available gender bias create further obstacles. Teachers and facilitators' perception about the roles of women in society can negatively affect the success rates of girls in primary school, especially when they indicate, through their teaching behavior, that boys are more intelligent and gifted academically than girls.
In response to this challenge, CARE and two other leading international non-profit organizations and a large international engineering group are joining as a team to implement the New School Program over a period of 45 months.
CARE's partners are the Education Development Center (EDC), World Education and the engineering group comprised of EHAF Consulting Engineers in partnership with O'Brien Kreitzberg, a URS Corporation/Dames and Moore Group member. These four partners are joined by nine Egyptian collaborating resource organizations and educational institutions, which are integral to NSP implementation, and have participated in developing the strategy and activities in this proposal. Each of these organizations contributes a set of complementary skills, hands-on field experience, and leadership in areas that are critical to the success of the program. This partnership, brought together by the shared vision of its members, is denominated the CARE Team.
