56 Xhe School for Nurses and Midwives is also being reorganised. An effort isbeing made to secure a better type of student, so as to raise the status and efficiency of the school. There are now 46 women in training as compared with 43 in 1914.

35. Higher Training Colleges.

These colleges train teachers for the primary and secondary schools and the elementary training colleges, and have to meet the requirements not only of the Government schools but of the schools under Provincial Councils and the private schools. The Nasria Training College trains Sheikhs as teachers of Arabic and cognate subjects, and the Sultania Training College trains teachers of the elTendi class for all other higher teaching posts. These colleges, with the Sania Training College for schoolmistresses, are thus pivotal institutions. Upon their expansion and progress depends the whole future development of Egyptian education.

It is therefore a matter of deep concern that the Sultania Training College should be in a state of decline. The number of students admitted to the college has declined from 108 in 1915, 99 in 1916 and 95 in 1917 to 45 in 1918 and 15 in the current school year. As a result the total number of students is now only 143, as compared with 224 in December 1918 and 273 in December 1917. Not only has there been this serious falling-off in numbers, but the quality of the students recruited has also in recent years markedly deteriorated. Until the year 1914 the college obtained nearly all the students it required from the first half of the secondary certificate examination pass list, but more recently the candidates who stand high on the pass list have in an increasing degree turned to professions other than teaching. It is obvious that unless this tendency is checked it will be very prejudicial, if not fatal, to the general improvement and extension of education throughout the country. Several causes seem to have combined to bring about this result—the imposition of school fees in 1914, the extension of the course of training from three to four years in 1918, and the inferior prospects open to teachers in comparison with those in other professions. As regards the last cause, which is undoubtedly the most influential, the question of revised scales of pay for teachers is under consideration, and I hope that the teaching profession will again become sufficiently attractive to command a satisfactory class of candidate.

About half of the students were excluded on account of non-attendance at the college from the diploma examination in December 1919. Of the 50 students who were allowed to attend 44 passed. The college is in urgent need of new buildings.

The number of students in the Nasria Training College has declined from 331 in 1914 to 305 in 1919.

36. State University. Educational developments have now reached a stage which makes it possible, and very desirable, to consider as a practical question the establishment of a State University. Government at present provides professional courses of university standard in medicine, pharmacy, veterinary science, law, engineering, agriculture, commerce and education, in dissociated colleges. The existing organisation is, however, admittedly incomplete and defective. It is found that the students on admission are inadequately prepared for higher specialised studies, and in consequence a certain amount of general preliminary education has to be included in the professional courses. The existing colleges furnish no opportunity for students, after completing their secondary course, to secure a liberal education apart from a professional career; the complete separation of the courses makes the present organisation of higher education inelastic, leaving little opportunity for optional studies or for different combinations of courses, and insufficient provision and incentive exist for post-graduate studies or.original research. In short, the present organisation insufficiently sets forth high ideals, has developed no academic traditions, and is too exclusively utilitarian. It tends to foster the belief that the obtaining of a diploma is the one and only purpose to be kept in view, and fails to evoke the true spirit of culture—the pursuit of learning for its own sake. It therefore does not succeed in making an adequate contribution to the life and thought of the nation. Moreover, the number of pupils who now complete the secondary course and desire to continue their studies has outgrown the existing provision for higher education.

While there is need for the expansion of the existing professional colleges (especially the schools of medicine and engineering) an effort should be made at the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online. Copyright (c) 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.