Beyond the accent: Hidden realities of international schools hiring in Egypt
I met Mr. Malone in 2014, during my first year working as a teacher. Malone was African American and taught high school English at an American international school in Cairo. I was a fresh graduate.
I remember him as the “cool” teacher in his mid-30s who rode a black Harley motorcycle that growled every morning before assembly. His students adored him. Though he had a reputation for being strict, his popularity came from his energetic, humorous interactions with students.
I was new to working life. My only qualifications were a political science degree from the American University in Cairo and a good command of English. I had zero teaching experience. The last time I set foot in a school was as a student myself.
I was impressed by Malone, and our relationship deepened over the academic year. I learned that he earned $2,000 a month, which was typical for teachers with foreign passports. At the time, I didn’t feel jealous although I was earning 5,000 Egyptian pounds (about $700 then), it was a decent salary for a fresh graduate.
One afternoon, we had a chat while crossing one of the school’s long corridors after a tiring day. I shared with him how I was overwhelmed by a class and felt inadequate due to my lack of pedagogical training. Trying to be supportive, he told me he, too, had never studied education before coming to Egypt, and that much of what we needed to learn comes on-the-job.
Shocked, I asked what he did in the USA. He replied, “I’ve been driving trucks since I finished high school. Transporting anything and everything.”
The power of the passport
Years of working in international schools in Egypt have taught me that Malone’s story is not unique. Anyone who has dealt with these schools as an insider, whether educators or administrators, knows this well.
We, the “Egyptian teachers,” sit at the bottom of a hierarchy where identity, language, and passport determine one’s status.
An Egyptian with an US passport earns more than one without. This logic is often accepted by a significant segment of parents, without critique.
We discriminate against an experienced Egyptian teacher who has dedicated their life to the classrooms by placing them below their foreign counterparts.
The higher salaries paid to foreigners and Egyptian dual-nationals highlights the double standards in teacher evaluation, driven by ‘uqdat al-khawaga’/inferiority complex.
The accent obsession
One of the main reasons parents accept this is their desire for schools that will give their children an authentic American or British accent. This obsession often leads to them accepting subpar teachers, so long as they “sound” right.
It’s important here to distinguish between accent and pronunciation. The difference is significant. Yet the obsession with accent is, at its core, tied to class. In Egypt, having an American or British accent is seen as a sign of “refinement” or wealth. It becomes a symbol of power, often more powerful than capital itself. This cannot be separated from American cultural hegemony and the historical moment we are living in.
Another reason is that many foreign teachers, unlike their Egyptian peers, have formal education degrees that prepare them to teach, plan lessons, and engage with different age groups. My own hiring story is a case in point: most Egyptian teachers begin without any formal training and learn the methods on the job.
Teaching since 2014, I’ve noticed two types of international schools: The "budget" ones catering to the upper-middle class, which rely on fresh grads like me or unqualified but foreigners like Malone. The second includes elite schools with exorbitant fees that can afford to hire highly qualified foreign and Egyptian teachers.
The problem is the lack of consistent professional requirements. Even more critically, Egyptian universities fail to produce enough well-trained, bilingual educators to meet the growing demand.
To be fair, a university degree alone doesn’t make a great teacher. Teaching is a demanding profession that requires emotional intelligence, organizational skills, classroom management, curriculum design, and more. Malone, for example, had some of those skills. But theoretical knowledge sharpens practice. Globally, most education faculties combine academic training with in-class experience for this reason.
The danger of commodified education
According to official data, the number of international schools in Egypt grew from 168 in 2011 to 785 in 2020. Another 20 opened in 2021. Today, there are about 2.5 million students in private schools of various types.
Focusing on elite schools might seem odd, given that they serve a tiny segment of society. But the overall trend towards the commodification and privatization of education, as a response to the shortcomings of public schools, calls for scrutiny. These for-profit institutions promise quality education, but ultimately deliver a service that should be a basic right.
Numerous studies examine why teachers from the Global North migrate to countries like Egypt. In addition to enjoying a different culture and better climate, many find they can live like royalty here on salaries ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 a month, a modest sum by Western standards.
They even manage to save money. Meanwhile, Egyptian teachers earn between 20,000 and 50,000 pounds a month ($400 to $1,000). With the devaluation of the Egyptian pound and rising costs, it’s becoming unsustainable to hire foreign teachers without drastically increasing tuition fees to sustain profits.
The international school market is growing rapidly in the Gulf, China, and Southeast Asia, which makes salaries in those countries more competitive. This affects the caliber of foreign teachers who come to Egypt. School administrations seem to strategically reserve senior and administrative roles for foreigners, using them as the face of the school to satisfy parents and justify the costs.
To offset financial losses, schools increasingly hire Egyptians who speak foreign languages. However, these teachers’ salaries have not increased proportionally to the rising tuition fees, which has negatively impacted their performance and driven many qualified educators to leave the profession, or the country, in search of better opportunities abroad.
One might argue that international school teachers are still better off than their public school counterparts, given higher pay and better working conditions. But even these teachers fall into what lecturer in international education Tristan Bunnell calls the “precariat”—a term coined by labor economist Guy Standing to describe professionals who, despite their qualifications, live with job insecurity, poor working conditions, and minimal rights.
This is the reality for many international school teachers in Egypt. They lack protections provided by trade unions or oversight bodies. Female teachers, for instance, are often exploited with promises of tuition discounts for their children in exchange for excessive workloads. Refusing these conditions could mean being blacklisted from all other international schools. I’ve witnessed this personally and heard similar stories from colleagues.
We send our children to international schools to secure them a better future. While these schools impose Euro-centric narratives about our history and culture, they also offer valuable skills for the job market like critical thinking and communication.
But the Western dominance in these schools is not just ideological. It’s materially embedded in the everyday lives of teachers. This should prompt us to examine the chains of exploitation within the international school business today.
Despite the large sums parents pay, children often receive less attention than promised. Recognizing these contradictions is the first step towards finding real solutions.
Years later, I ran into Malone on a flight from New York. I asked him how he was doing and whether he was still teaching in Egypt. He said, “I’ve been back to driving trucks for a few years now. Just coming to Egypt for my annual medical checkup. It’s way cheaper here!”