This article contributes to the debates about the priorities of education reform in Egypt and approaches to reducing the students’ reliance on private tutoring. It presents the results of five focus group discussions with first year students in the Faculty of Economics and Political Science (FEPS), Cairo University, to understand their experiences with private tutoring during the high stakes final year of high school. The article concludes that private tutoring represents a façade of the pedagogical, social, and emotional support functions that schools should perform. This contributes to our understanding of why private tutoring in Egypt has come to supplant, rather than supplement, formal schooling.

本文有助于就埃及教育改革的优先重点以及减少学生对私人补习的依赖的方法进行辩论。它介绍了与开罗大学经济与政治学系（FEPS）的一年级学生进行的五次焦点小组讨论的结果，以了解他们在高中最后一年的高风险期间接受私人补习的经历。本文的结论是，私人补习代表了学校应履行的教学，社会和情感支持职能的立面。这有助于我们理解为什么埃及的私人补习取代了正规的教育，而不是补充了正规的教育。