If 2024 was the year of survival (read: inflation, tuition hikes, and currency volatility), 2025 was the year of structural surgery. For decades, the business community’s complaint has been consistent: graduates are not workforce-ready. This year, policy and private sector responses finally aligned to address that gap. From the radical slimming down of the Thanaweya Amma curriculum to the aggressive rollout of vocational schools and the mandatory introduction of AI, the theme of 2025 was employability over credentialism.

While the state looked inward to fix the system, the private sector looked outward. 2025 will be remembered as the year Egypt became a net exporter of education management, with major operators placing flags in Saudi Arabia and — in a historic first — the US. Below is the breakdown of how the education sector fared in 2025.

Deep-pocketed investors made their mark on the local education market + Egyptian players look abroad

The year started with a bang when the Saudi Public Investment Fund-backed Social Impact Capital cemented its grip on CIRA Education in an EGP 3.4 bn transaction that brought its total stake to 88.7%. The acquisition signaled that the sector’s leading private-sector operator was clearing the decks for a new phase of aggressive growth both in and outside of Egypt.

This PIF-backed warchest was soon put to good use, with the EGX-listed education outfit moving to acquire up to 90% of its subsidiary Cairo for Educational Services and buying 51% of L’École Française d’Hurghada to enter the Red Sea market.

CIRA Global Ventures also acquired a stake in Falcon Academy — the first time an Egyptian education group has made a strategic entry into the North American K-12 market — signaling that CIRA Education now has the balance sheet and confidence to compete in the world’s most mature market.

EFG Hermes-backed K-12 operator Spark Education Platform also got in on the expansion action, acquiring a majority stake in Riyadh’s Qimam El Hayat International School in January and partnering with GEMS to launch schools in KSA and Bahrain by June. Smaller players also looked to expand and acquire in the GCC, including local startup iSchool, which acquired Saudi-Egyptian peer Algoriza’s edtech arm Seeds to cement its foothold in the Kingdom.

Businesses moved to produce the talent they need by building schools themselves

The disconnect between the skills of university graduates and labor market needs drove a massive wave of investment in technical education in 2025. GB Corp partnered with Saxony Egypt University (which officially opened its doors in April) for automotive mechatronics and the Egyptian Drug Authority backed pharma-tech schools in August, showing that businesses are no longer waiting for universities to produce talent — they’re building the schools themselves, as they have with vocational training for more than a decade.

The Central Bank of Egypt even began its rollout of a first-of-its-kind bachelor’s program in banking sciences in partnership with the Higher Education Ministry and the Supreme Council of Universities. The degree — offered by selected universities and institutes to high school graduates — aims to arm students with specialist knowledge, practical skills, and ethical foundations to succeed in an industry being reshaped by rapid digital transformation.

Egyptian universities looked abroad, while foreign investors eyed Egypt

2025 was the year the strategy shifted from merely attracting foreign students to exporting entire campuses. Cairo University and Alexandria University led the charge with advanced plans to establish physical branches in Riyadh, Doha, and Abu Dhabi, aiming to directly serve the massive Egyptian expatriate community and the growing Gulf student market on their own turf.

The private sector followed the same vector, with Future University in Egypt signaling its entry into the UAE’s postgraduate market and Alexandria University renewing its push into Africa. This geographic diversification represents a critical evolution in the sector’s business model: By generating tuition revenue in foreign currency abroad, universities are effectively building a natural hedge against domestic volatility while projecting Egyptian soft power across the MENA region.

While Egyptian universities went abroad, the state continued to give incentives to foreign universities to set up shop here — a clear strategy to stop the drain of hard currency from students studying overseas. This included facilitating the entry of new players like Queen Margaret University and Edinburgh Napier University as policymakers explicitly target the segment of the population most likely to export hard currency via tuition fees.

The state also doubled down on its higher education capacity at home to address the concentration of high-quality national universities in and around Cairo. The government approved the establishment of 12 new national universities in a single sweep, targeting governorates like Sohag, Luxor, and the New Valley. This strategy aims to decentralize quality education, stopping the internal migration to Cairo while offering a state-backed alternative to private universities.

The end of Thanaweya Amma as we knew it, the introduction of the Egyptian Baccalaureate, and the return of the SATs

The ghost of the Thanaweya Amma — the high-stress, memorization-heavy nightmare of many an Egyptian household — was finally exorcised this year. After years of floating alternatives, the Education Ministry pulled the trigger on a massive restructuring that prioritized depth over breadth. The decision to slash the number of core subjects and to relegate second languages to pass/fail status was controversial, but it signaled a shift toward specialization.

The rollout of the Egyptian Baccalaureate in October gave private operators the premium national product they have long craved, effectively bridging the chasm between the rigid Thanaweya Amma and international diplomas. For school operators, this was an immediate commercial W, capturing families desperate to escape the single-exam nightmare but unable to stomach the soaring costs of IB or American diplomas. It has created what many operators hope will be a stickier middle-tier product that balances affordability with international-style flexibility.

SATs are back — and so are the waitlists. After a four-year hiatus, the SAT officially made itsreturn to Egypt in June, sparking a scramble for seats at American-diploma schools. With the College Board rolling out a new “leak-proof” digital format, confidence in the American track surged almost overnight. Admissions officers told us at the time that the decision triggered a wave of transfers — particularly among students in grades 10 and 11 — who had previously been hedging their choices with IGCSEs or national certificates.

AI went from buzzword to syllabus

2025 marked the year the state formalized AI education, moving beyond vague notions of digital literacy to specific, examinable skills. The Education Ministry rolled out mandatory AI curricula for select primary and secondary grades starting in the 2025-26 academic year, focusing on applied programming and ethics rather than just theory.

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