Al-Azhar Thanaweya

Overview

Al-Azhar Thanaweya (شهادة الثانوية الأزهرية, the Azhari Secondary Certificate) is a separate secondary-school exam from Egypt's mainstream Thanaweya Amma. It is not run by the Ministry of Education and Technical Education; it is run by Al-Azhar Al-Sharif's own pre-university education system (the Azhar Institutes Sector), which operates its own primary, preparatory and secondary institutes in parallel to the Ministry's schools. Students in this system sit for the Azhari primary certificate, then the Azhari preparatory certificate, then this secondary certificate at the end of grade 12.

The core difference from Thanaweya Amma is curriculum, not just administration: alongside standard academic subjects (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, foreign languages, history, geography, statistics), Azhari secondary students also study a full slate of religious subjects - Quran and Hadith, Tawhid (Islamic theology), Fiqh (jurisprudence, taught according to the Shafi'i school), Nahw and Sarf (Arabic grammar and morphology) - that do not appear on the Ministry's own secondary curriculum. As of the 2021/2022 academic year, roughly 381,000 students were enrolled at the Azhari secondary level nationwide, out of more than 2.2 million students across all levels of the Azhar Institutes system.

Who can apply

Candidates are students enrolled in grade 12 (the third and final year) of an Azhari secondary institute, having been promoted through grades 10 and 11 within the same Al-Azhar Institutes system after completing the Azhari preparatory certificate. As in the Ministry system, students choose a section earlier in secondary school and carry it through to the final exam: a Scientific section and a Literary section. Sources used for this page did not confirm a further split of the Scientific section into separate science and mathematics groups the way Thanaweya Amma's new scheme does, so this page describes only the two sections.

Exam pattern

Each section sits its own set of final-year written papers, held over several weeks in June and into July. The confirmed 2026 total was 650 marks for the Scientific section and 590 marks for the Literary section, reflecting that Scientific-section students carry extra marks-heavy subjects (physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics) that Literary-section students do not take.

Literary section - confirmed 2026 subject schedule

Scientific section

Confirmed 2026 papers include Quran and Hadith, Fiqh (Shafi'i school), Physics, Chemistry and Biology. News coverage used for this page did not publish the Scientific section's full subject-by-subject schedule the way it did for the Literary section, so this page does not state its complete subject list; students should confirm the full Scientific-section timetable with their own institute or Al-Azhar's own published schedule each year.

Both sections also carry other common subjects (Arabic-language and foreign-language papers, and in the Scientific section, mathematics) alongside the religious subjects, consistent with the three-subject-group structure - religious education, Arabic language, and general/academic education - that Al-Azhar's secondary curriculum is organised around.

Marking and results

Each subject is marked out of its own allotted marks, which sum to the section total (650 for Scientific, 590 for Literary). For the 2026 cycle, the overall pass rate across both sections was 54.18%: 61.53% in the Scientific section (81,311 candidates registered, 67,724 sat the exam, 41,672 passed) and 45.83% in the Literary section (82,366 candidates registered, 59,614 sat the exam, 27,319 passed), out of 163,677 registered candidates nationwide.

As with Thanaweya Amma, a candidate's combined mark converts to a percentage that feeds into university admission. Azhari Secondary Certificate holders can enrol directly at Al-Azhar University, and the certificate is also usable, through an equivalency recognised by the Supreme Council of Egyptian Universities, in the same national "tansiq" coordination process that Thanaweya Amma graduates use to apply to other Egyptian public universities.

Important dates

For the 2025/2026 cycle:

• Scientific section written exams: 6 June - 8 July 2026.

• Literary section written exams: 7 June - 2 July 2026.

• Results: approved and announced around 26 July 2026.

Exact dates are set by Al-Azhar's own administration each academic year, so students should confirm the current year's schedule with their institute or Al-Azhar's official channels closer to the exam.

How to apply

Because Al-Azhar Thanaweya is sat only by students already enrolled in an Azhari secondary institute, there is no separate public application for the exam itself - registration is handled by the student's own institute as part of continuous enrolment through the Azhar Institutes Sector, the same body that runs the preceding Azhari primary and preparatory stages. A student who wants to move into this system from the Ministry's schools would need to apply for admission to an Azhari institute itself, which is a separate process from registering for the final-year certificate exam.

After the exam

Once results are approved, Azhari Secondary Certificate holders can apply directly to Al-Azhar University's own faculties. The certificate also carries into Egypt's national "tansiq" university-coordination process alongside Thanaweya Amma, run with the Supreme Council of Universities and the Ministry of Higher Education, so holders can use it, with the applicable equivalency, to apply to other Egyptian public universities as well. Students holding the Ministry's Thanaweya Amma who instead want to join Al-Azhar University's religious-studies faculties generally need a separate equivalency exam to the Azhari certificate; students applying with a Thanaweya Amma to Al-Azhar's non-religious faculties (science, humanities and similar) can typically do so through the ordinary tansiq process without that additional equivalency exam.

Preparation tips

• Treat the religious subjects (Quran and Hadith, Tawhid, Fiqh, Nahw, Sarf) with the same seriousness as the academic ones - they carry real marks toward the section total, not a token pass/fail add-on.

• For the Scientific section, budget revision time across both the heavier science and mathematics papers and the religious and Arabic-language papers, since the section's higher 650-mark total spreads across all of them.

• Work from the official exam timetable each year rather than a template from a previous year - the subject order and exact dates are reset annually and have shifted from one year to the next in recent cycles.

• Students considering university study outside Al-Azhar's own faculties should check, before the exam, which equivalency route (if any) their target university and faculty will require, since this differs between Al-Azhar's own religious faculties and other state universities.