16 January 2008…. Minister of Education, Dr. Yousri EL-Gamal, visited Britain during the period from 6 to 12 January 2008, where he participated with the delegations of sixty-one countries in the fifth annual meeting for the Ministers of Education of the pre-university education entitled "Moving Young Minds". This year's conference aimed at discussing the means of developing schools at all stages to cope with the requirements of the 21st century, and the role of communication and information technology to support national efforts to promote the educational process. Dr. Yousri El- Gamal focused in his speeches during the conference and his bilateral meetings, on Egypt's efforts in spreading the use of modern technology in schools, indicating that the Ministry of Education launched the electronic portal inaugurated by the Prime Minister, which aims at propagating to the electronic education and the production of educational programs. The minister added that Egypt is confronting many challenges in this respect, which requires the state and the civil society institutions to exert more efforts to spread the use of technology, as there are forty thousand schools in Egypt, which include more than 15 million students in the pre-university education stage. The Minister of Education also visited New Castle in North Britain, in which there are 150 Egyptian teachers where he was keen to follow up the benefit of the new program which aims to boost the efficiency and performance of the teachers, especially that the Ministry of Education has decided to extend the training period from three months to nine months enable trainees to fulfilling benefit from the program.