Second Week of Term and Hurghada Still Has No German Teachers for New Pupils

For a second consecutive week since term began, the row over German teaching is still running at Hurghada's official language schools and distinguished official language schools, with too few German teachers to go round, according to Al-Masry Al-Youm.

The shortage has pushed some schools to offer French instead of German to new pupils. Parents object, and say that what they have been told is that German is not being abolished - there simply are not enough teachers able to deliver it. They are asking the education ministry and the Red Sea education directorate to fill the gap rather than change what their children study.

What the parents want made public:

• a clear official statement of which second foreign languages are open to new pupils
• which schools and which classes the language-choice rule applies to
• what the ministry and the directorate have actually done to recruit German teachers

Ahmed Mohamed, one of the parents, said German matters particularly for pupils in the Red Sea Governorate, given how much of the local labour market runs on tourism and hotels and on dealing with visitors, German speakers among them. A pupil's second language, he argued, should not be decided by how many teachers a school happens to have: families choose German with a view to further study, university places or work in tourism. Filling teacher shortages is the education authorities' job, he said, and the pupil should not pay for it by having their language switched.

Malak Mohamed, another parent, said that if a shortage of German teachers is the reason the language is not being offered to some new pupils, it should be treated as a gap inside the education system and fixed there, rather than loaded onto the pupil and the family.

The report does not say how many teaching posts are unfilled, how many pupils are affected, or whether the directorate is recruiting.

This site reported on the dispute on 20 September, when the directorate's director-general of general education said the change applies to new pupils only and that those who chose German in earlier years would not be moved. A week into term, the parents' question - who will actually teach it - has not been answered.