This study assesses the educational progress of Egypt, especially in basic education and identifies the issues that still need to be addressed. At the level of basic education real progress has been made on narrowing regional and reducing gender disparities, reducing class size, eliminating multiple shifts, increasing class instructional time, and introducing technology in the classroom. While Egypt is to be lauded for its significant achievements, problems persist in the education sector. Of particular concern are the problems of the poor. The poor face numerous disadvantages in educating their children, mostly due to: more children per household, low parental education, very limited access to kindergarten, and a high private cost of public schooling. As a result, of all children age seven to eleven who are not attending school, 50 percent are from the poorest segment of the population. While Egypt has embarked on an ambitious and comprehensive education reform program, it faces numerous challenges to attain its educational goals. Foremost among the challenges are: a) improve the quality of schooling, from primary through university; b) strengthen management of educational institutions by decentralizing decisions, and promoting accountability; c) increase efficiency in the use of resources by reducing over-staffing, introducing new financial mechanisms, and given higher education managers increased autonomy and accountability in internal resource allocation; and finally, d) improve equity by ensuring the children of the poor are adequately prepared to begin school, reducing private costs of education to the poor, better targeting higher education subsidies, and initiate parent education programs to improve child development in the home. The reform program is affordable in the long run if recommendations on quality, equity and efficiency and carried out in tandem and regularly barriers to redeploy