Egypt is grappling with a significant crisis in the number of teachers and their poor salaries, whether those with permanent, temporary or freelance contracts. The shortage in the number of teachers in Egypt is estimated at tens of thousands. According to the current minister of education, Reda Hegazy, 20,000 teachers are needed annually to fill the deficit, while many teachers retire due to reaching retirement age. Many educators and researchers attribute this crisis to the decision issued in 1997 by the government of Kamal al-Ganzouri to stop employing education college graduates, thus leaving many of them unemployed. So, the shortage in the number of teachers accumulated over more than 25 years.

In 2023, the first phase of an initiative to appoint 150,000 teachers over five years was launched under the auspices of the President of the Republic to fill the deficit. The first phase of recruitment of 30,000 teachers has already begun, with 90,000 teachers taking the test, which was set by the Central Agency for Organization and Administration (CAOA), of whom 28,000 passed. The education ministry had announced that it would initially prioritise the recruitment of teachers in primary schools and kindergartens according to the deficit in each school across the country.

After the CAOA announced the test results, the education ministry organised a program to develop the capabilities of teachers who passed the competition and another for teachers' physical and mental fitness to measure their ability to tolerate explanations to students in the classroom. A second round of tests was held at the Military Academy – an illegal move not even included in the ministry's announcement of the competition – for those who passed the CAOA’s test.

The second phase of tests included medical examination, physical exercises (push-ups, abdominal exercises, running for 100 meters in 20 seconds, and weighing), and final assessment.

Following these tests, thousands of male and female teachers were excluded because of overweight, pregnancy, and childbirth, or for failing the medical, physical, mental fitness and assessment tests held at the Military Academy, which constitutes a clear violation of the law, the constitution and international conventions.

Shedding light on the actual employment conditions in this vital sector, this paper reviews a number of facts and figures revealing the conditions of teachers in Egypt in terms of average wages in both the private and public sectors, the disparity in wages between males and females, and the total number of teachers and their academic qualifications, in public and private schools and at the rural and urban levels. The paper also reviews the student-to-teacher ratios in Egypt compared with the global ones, and finally, the figures of government spending on education.