No aspect of the British occupation of Egypt is more open to criticism than its effect on education. Its staunchest apologists in later years, such as Lord Lloyd and Sir Valentine Chirol, could find little to say on this subject. Milner relegated The Egyptian education to a section of a chapter entitled "Odds and Ends of Reform". 

Cromer's first concern was to economize and his second was to limit both primary and secondary school graduates to a number that could be absorbed into the government administration. This double purpose was served by reversing Muhammad `Aliy's and Isma`yil's policy of providing free education in the government schools, 

At the start of the British occupation Egypt had a dual educational system: 

1) The Islamic, based on the kuttabs, including government primary and secondary schools, and one higher institute of learning: al-Azhar University.  Others were sent to France for their higher education.  Mainly because it was safer and wiser to send them to France rather than Great Britain in order to avoid falling under the sway of the British cultural hegemony . 

2) The foreign mission (Greek, Italian, French and American) schools established in the country catering to the Royal khedival family, rich landowning bourgeoisie, the aristocracy and the foreign expatriates. The foreign system could be described at par with any Western educational system in the world at that time, however it produced a generation completely divorced from the Egyptian culture and basically illiterate in Arabic.  Both of which considerably diluted its potential contribution to the country.

The Reformed  progressive Islamic system, created by Muhammad `Aliy and Isma`iyl, thanks to the Waqf institutions, survived a few years into the occupation despite all odds.  However this situation was short lived.  Nevertheless, amazingly from this systememerged an intellectual Egyptian élite recognized today as the age of Giants "`asr al-Fatahiyl". To mention few of them: 

Thinkers and reformers like Shaykh Muhammad `Abduh, Qasim Amiyn, Muhammad Fariyd Wagdiy, Hasan al-Shariyf, Zaynab Hashim and Ahmad Lutfiy al-Sayyid. National leaders like Sa`d Zaghluwl, Mustafa Kamil, Muhammad Fariyd, Mustafa al-Nahhas and Shaykh Hasan al-Banna. 

Creative writers like Taha Husayn, Haykal, Tawfiyq al-Hakiym, Yahya Haqqiy, `Ayishah al-Taymuwriyah,her two nephews Muhammad, and Mahmuwd Taymour, and others such as `Abbas al-`Aqqad, Ahmad Amiyn, Salamah Muwsa, Hifniy Nasif, `Aliy al-Jarim, `Aliy al-Sa`atiy, Mahmuwd Ghunaym, Muhammad al-'Asmar, Mustafa Lutfiy al-Manfaluwtiyand MustafaSadiq aI-Raf`iy. 

At the basis of Cromer's attitude towards Egyptian education lay his laissez-faire principles, which were aimed at keeping Egyptians in a state of subservience. He positively disapproved of the state's expansion of secondary and higher education, partly because he thought it would produce a surplus of subversive demagogues divorced from the mass of their own people but also because, like most Victorian liberals, he did not believe that it was the state’s duty to provide education. 

Tuition fees were charged and raised when the number of applicants for entry into the primary schools was considered excessive. At the same time, Cromer instituted a system of examinations for primary and secondary school certificates, which were required for entry into the appropriate levels of the civil service. The examinations were made difficult enough to ensure that a substantial number failed.  But the result of making the Egyptians pay for their children’s higher education became the prerogative of the wealthy. Egypt’s élite was not only divorced from the masses but had no common interest with them.

To be continued