USAID Has Advanced STEM Education in Egypt Despite Some Implementation Challenges

Prospects for long-term stability and prosperity in Egypt, a key U.S. ally, are hindered by Egypt’s poor education system. To help the Egyptian Ministry of Education expand and strengthen its efforts to provide science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, in August 2012 USAID/Egypt awarded a 4-year, $25 million cooperative agreement to World Learning to implement the STEM School Project. We conducted this audit to determine whether project activities advanced STEM education for targeted students. We also examined English language instruction and cost-sharing requirements during implementation to determine whether the project built the ministry’s capacity to replicate and sustain STEM schools. We found that the project successfully reached targeted students with instruction and increased the capacity of ministry staff, school administrators, and teachers in admissions, instruction, testing, and records management. As of June 2016, the Egyptian Government had established nine STEM schools, well beyond the three to five initially expected, demonstrating staff’s capability to replicate the STEM model. Yet English language instruction proved insufficient, requiring World Learning to develop an online resource that would boost English proficiency, and World Learning still needed to be more transparent in reporting its costsharing contributions and meeting its commitment. The mission agreed with and took corrective actions to address two of the three recommendations regarding cost sharing. The third recommendation remains unresolved pending Agency determination on the allowability of questioned costs.