Egypt’s colonial schools standardized identical classroom layouts nationwide.

Evidence

In all the schools the layout and furnishing of the classroom was to be identical: rows of benches without backs, a dais and blackboard of the correct size, a chair for the teacher. The separate buildings of a school were to be placed in geometrical relation to one another, to achieve the same ‘order’. The government primary school in Cairo was laid out, and described, as follows: around a large courtyard stand four main buildings. The largest, at the rear, is for the classrooms; the one on the right, for kitchens and refectories; the one on the left, for the infirmary and the wash-house; the remaining one, which faces onto the street, contains the dormitories. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 273