Let go in Kuwait: Egyptian teachers on a knife-edge

“We hereby inform you that the Ministry of Education intends to terminate the second contract concluded with you while it remains in force, pursuant to Clause 4 bis of the second contract, subject to the prescribed notice period.”

The notice arrived on the phone of Fatima Zaki*, an Arabic teacher in Kuwait, through the government app Sahel, at 3 pm on Sept. 8. School had already been back in session for two days, when the message ended her 22 years of work in the Gulf.

Fatima, 50, had known notices like this were coming. Colleagues had already received them, beginning on Sept. 6 and 7. Teachers who’ve been working in Kuwait since the ’90s, and some who came in 2011 and 2015,” she tells Al Manassa.

What surprised Fatima and the other teachers was that at the end of the last school year, they had been told their contracts were renewed for 2026/27. These are direct contracts with Kuwait’s Ministry of Education, with no intermediary.

Fatima says their situation is different from that of “the teachers who come on secondment from the Egyptian government.” Shady Zalata, spokesperson for Egypt’s Ministry of Education, has made the same distinction. 

He clarified that the Egyptian teachers let go in Kuwait “don’t fall under the Egyptian Ministry of Education,” and that teachers seconded to Kuwait through the ministry are continuing their work under the terms of their secondment orders.

Kuwaitizing education

On Sept. 7, 2026, Kuwait’s Ministry of Education announced a phased plan to deal with surplus teaching staff. It said it had reviewed staffing against the needs of schools across specializations, grade levels and education districts.

The ministry said its teaching staff totals about 91,761 men and women, not counting those in supervisory posts. Kuwaiti nationals make up 70.6% of them. Gulf nationals and residents in irregular status account for 10.1%, and resident teachers of Arab and other nationalities for 19.3%.

A workforce study found an actual surplus of about 33,268 teachers, the ministry said, in specializations where staffing exceeds what schools need.

The ministry then announced the first phase of replacing foreign teachers with Kuwaiti nationals, expecting annual savings of about 42 million Kuwaiti dinars ($135 million) from salaries alone. It will end the contracts of about 7,019 teachers hired from Arab and other nationalities. Those affected will be notified through Sahel.  

The ministry’s statement didn’t break the figures down by nationality, Egyptians included. Fatima’s own estimate, based on the colleagues she knows, is that Egyptians make up more than 70% of those let go. It is not an official number.

Get out of Kuwait!

Losing their jobs isn’t the only threat the teachers face. The ministry chose the start of the school year to end their work, just after they had returned from vacation and prepared for a new year. That caught them off guard.

Fatima says termination can mean having to leave Kuwait, “because residency is tied to your job status.” Under the residency rules, workers get a three-month grace period to find another job. After that, they have to leave the country.

It isn’t only teachers. Efforts to cut budgets reach other sectors too, including journalism. “My husband’s a journalist, and his salary’s part of the pay-cut plan too. So I lost my job, and on top of that his pay went down,” she says.

This tracks with the 2024 halt to new work permits for Egyptian workers going to Kuwait, along with 2022’s recruitment controls and priority for the specializations Kuwait’s labor market needs.

The Egyptian workforce in Kuwait fell to about 468,800 at the end of 2025, according to labor market data published in Kuwait. At the end of 2024 it was more than 477,000. That is a drop of about 8,300 workers during 2025.

Several travel and recruitment agencies contacted by Al Manassa confirmed the downturn. According to the Gulf Union office, Kuwaiti visas for Egyptian nationals have been suspended for roughly 20 months, with even valid visa holders facing entry hurdles. Representatives from the Aziz office noted that the freeze extends far beyond teachers to include “all kinds of professions,” while the Al-Tarek agency characterized Kuwait—once a primary hub for Egyptian labor—as an increasingly difficult market to enter.

The currency gap

The effect of the terminations spreads to remittances from Egyptians abroad, says Hanan Ramsis, an economist and capital markets expert, “given the value of the Kuwaiti dinar, which is about 175 pounds.” Remittances from Egyptians in Kuwait reached $2.1 billion in 2023/24, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS).

“Egyptians’ remittances don’t depend on Kuwait alone, or on teachers alone. Still, their return from Kuwait will affect the volume of remittances,” Ramsis tells Al Manassa. Then she adds a caveat: “I’d say this is temporary.”

Egyptian workers have moved from one country to another before, she notes, citing Libya and Algeria.

Former manpower minister Kamal Abu Eita describes a wider pattern for Egyptian workers in the Gulf. It isn’t limited to teachers or to Kuwait. “I know Egyptians whose employment ended in Gulf countries after they came back from vacation, and they include plenty of professions, not just teachers,” he tells Al Manassa.

The labor leader’s observation hasn’t shown up in remittances. Those rose by roughly $11 billion in 2025/26, to about $47.2 billion, from about $36.4 billion the previous fiscal year. But Abu Eita stresses the need to watch geopolitical conditions, from the spillover of the war on Iran to the fallout of the war in Yemen, and what they mean for Egyptian workers in the Gulf.

He calls for “opening new labor markets to Egyptians, and linking education and training to the needs of local and foreign labor markets.” As for the teachers, “the government should look into using them in Egyptian schools, since the state already has a shortage of teachers, and improve their pay.”

Al Manassa contacted Abdel Wahab Khedr, media spokesperson for the Ministry of Labor, and Zalata, media spokesperson for the Ministry of Education. Neither had responded by the time of publication.

The three months Fatima is legally allowed to stay in Kuwait without work are running out fast. She sees no way past the consequences of the decision. She hasn’t found another job to replace the salary that pays for her son’s studies at medical school.

* A pseudonym, at the source’s request.