In October 2014, the Specialized Council for Education and Scientific Research was established by the presidency as part of a targeted ‘effort’ to ‘ameliorate’ the state of education. Two months later, the council put forward a series of reform projects-30 in total-including a proposal to introduce fees to Egypt’s public universities. In short, it is a proposal that breaks with a 60 year old tradition of providing free public university education for Egyptian students. Most worrying, is the lack of clarity around whether this proposal will even be put forward to a wider public debate in the up-coming parliament. This minute example serves as an entry to point to discuss more broadly how legislation concerning education is created in Egypt. Most of Egypt’s education policy is designed and implemented in the form of ministerial decrees and is imagined, created and concretized behind closed doors without being subjected to parliamentary oversight or any other form of public debate. Whether we are talking about teacher training regulations, textbook content creation, school fees, school construction, pedagogical directions, funding or any other educational decision, the Egyptian public is almost always left out. Because the state of the Egyptian education system is notoriously dire, it is imperative to understand particularly how its laws and regulations come into being. The project will therefore focus on a number of areas related to the educational process and examine the ways in which they are developed through law. It will position these examinations within a broader historical tradition of law and education. What laws have been issued to regulate teacher training in recent years? What laws regulate the construction of schools? How are textbooks developed? How often are ministerial decrees issued and later revoked? How did legislation concerning education come about in the pre-1954 period? How does this process affect the quality of decisions? The research is based on Egyptian laws and decrees issued throughout the past decades as well as other primary materials obtained from the Ministry of Education.