University launches 'children's university' initiative

Sohag University in Upper Egypt has become the latest academic institution to introduce the 'Children's University', an ambitious course aimed at promoting creative, scientific abilities among school children, mainly in underprivileged communities, within the university environment.

Launched in 2015, the initiative is funded by Egypt’s state Academy of Scientific Research and Technology in cooperation with 34 public and private universities in the country. The programme has since admitted 15,000 school children aged nine to 15 years, according to official figures. It exposes them to university life and enables them to make their future academic choices at an early age.

Although open to all children, the programme targets the less fortunate, mainly those in Upper Egypt and rural areas.

Billed as a national project, the 'Children's University' sees children as change agents. Its main objective is to develop minds through nurturing their interest in science with an emphasis on the importance of scientific research and development of science skills, according to Egypt's Academy of Scientific Research and Technology.

“This programme is aimed at integrating children into the university community and giving them the chance to conduct experiments and research away from the traditional learning by rote,” Sohag University President Ahmed Aziz said last week at the launch ceremony in the province, located around 490 kilometres south of Cairo.

He said the programme, which is offered free, acquaints the children with the latest advances in different sciences and facilitates their transition from schooling to university life.

“The programme will seek to develop minds of pre-university children by giving them access to fresh scientific prospects, introducing them firsthand into the academic life and helping them learn the difference between theoretical and practical studies at the university,” Aziz said.

Seventy-eight schoolchildren from Sohag have been selected to attend the course at the university, according to Mohamed Heshmat, the programme coordinator at Sohag University.

“They will attend a set of lectures and workshops that will be held on weekends, the mid-year break and the summer holiday,” Heshmat said.

The lectures will be given by teachers from the university, covering science, information technology, ecology, arts and health engineering, he said.

The children are motivated to progress through the programme's certification scheme, based on their number of attendance hours. Around 4,300 schoolchildren are admitted into the current season of the course across Egypt, said the academy.

There are estimated to be nearly 21 million pre-university students in Egypt, the Arab world's most populous country of approximately 100 million people.

There has been a high demand for attending the Children's University since the initiative was launched, Egyptian officials say, amid a growing discontent with a decline in standards of conventional education in the country.