Foreign missionaries and resident communities ran most Egyptian schools before state education.

Evidence

The only government schools in existence were a military school, set up in 1862 and closed again in 1864, a naval school, and a much-neglected medical school at Qasr al-Aini. One other group of new schools that existed were those established by the communities of resident foreigners in Egypt and by European and American missionaries, mostly in the period of Sa`id Pasha (1854–63). — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 711