The content of the exams and their relative weight in scoring depends on the students' curricular concentration, either literature, science, or science/mathematics.
Thanaweya Amma has historically tested acquired knowledge, though reforms beginning in the 1990s introduced aptitude assessment as well.
[3] The admissions process to Egyptian public universities is managed by the Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education (usually referred to as Tansiq).
[6] After the end of the occupation, Mohammed Ali assumed power and undertook large-scale efforts to modernize the Egyptian state, including expanding the education system.
Because the overall function of the education system was still to train elite Egyptians for service in British colonial bureaucracy, the number of positions available upon completion were limited.
[8][9] The Nasser government's changes to the education system created the Thanaweya Amma exam in its modern form.
[9] The great importance placed on the Thanawey Amma sprung not only from changes to the test itself, but also the way the new government recast education's role in Egyptian society.
On a rhetorical level, education was exalted as a means of national development; it was enshrined as a citizen's right and played a key role in Arab nationalist discourse.
[12] Then, beginning in 1961–2, the government began extending public sector employment guarantees to graduates of public tertiary institutions, beginning with universities, and then extending to vocation secondary and technical institutes in 1946 (under Law 14) and finally all military conscripts under Law 85 of 1973.
[13] Thus, the Thanaweya Amma test became a crucial step for many Egyptians to access what became government entitlements (university education and subsequent employment).
Hargreaves argues that because education was structured as a means of national development, and not necessarily personal economic or social gain, students were allocated to universities based on the government's needs.
[15] In tandem with this policy (and in fact, extending all the way back to Sadat's Infitah), the government encouraged the private sector to drive employment growth.
[20] Hargreaves argues that the structure and importance of the Thanaweya Amma exam results in what Ronald Dore called the ‘Diploma Disease,’ in which ‘selection for higher education and employment become the driving force behind schools.’[21] She argues that classrooms in Egypt become oriented around examination and memorization from the earliest levels.