How the ratings are built and the full programme index.

The programme index.

Programme category	Lead editor	Programmes indexed	Cadence
Primary school programmes	Nada el-Boraey	38	Quarterly
Secondary school programmes	Tarek Hassanein	24	Quarterly
Workshop catalogue	Aisha Habashy	18	Quarterly
Family-day events	Aisha Habashy	8	Monthly
Teacher resources	Tarek Hassanein	Annual document	September revision
Booking process	Salma Refaat	Reference document	March revision
Annual season review	Nada + Khaled	Annual	December

The four-stage verification cycle.

Stage one — published source check. The lead editor reads the museum's published programme description on the museum's education-team page and on any aggregator the museum links to (the ministry's school-visit portal, the museum's own booking portal, the school's parent communications if applicable). The published sources are logged with the date.

Stage two — direct verification with the education team. The lead editor calls or visits the museum's education-team office to confirm the programme's current operational status, current pricing, current age-band labelling and current booking practice. The verification typically takes between forty-five minutes and two hours per programme.

Stage three — observed-visit record. About seventy percent of indexed programmes have at least one observed-visit record on file — a structured note from a teacher, parent or home-schooling adult who has taken a group through the programme. The cooperative recruits observers through its reader network; observers receive a small honorarium (EGP 200 per observed-visit report) for the structured note.

Stage four — rating publication. The lead editor produces the four-age-band ratings with the commentary, signed and dated. The published rating includes the source citations from stages one to three.

The four-age-band rating framework.

Each programme is rated separately for four age bands: primary lower (6 to 9), primary upper (10 to 12), secondary (13 to 17), and mixed-age family. The rating is on a five-point scale: poor, below average, adequate, good, excellent. The four-band approach is the index's distinctive editorial feature; one programme can score "excellent" for primary upper and "below average" for secondary, and the index documents both ratings openly.

The accessibility dimension.

Mona Habib's accessibility review runs as a separate annual audit. Each programme is rated on a six-point accessibility checklist: wheelchair access at the programme venue, hearing-assistance availability, cognitive-accessibility support (text alternatives, simplified language options), dual-language delivery (Arabic-English), visual fire-alarm provision for evacuation, and dedicated accessibility-staff training. Programmes scoring four or fewer of six are flagged in the published rating.

Curriculum-fit assessment.

For school programmes (primary and secondary), the index includes a curriculum-fit assessment against the Egyptian national curriculum framework. The assessment maps the programme content against the curriculum's documented learning objectives for the relevant age band and identifies the explicit fit, the implicit fit (where the programme supports related objectives without explicitly addressing them) and the gaps (curriculum objectives that the programme does not address). The assessment is intended to help school education coordinators plan visits as part of the annual curriculum.

The corrections process.

Corrections to published ratings are issued within thirty days of confirmation. The corrections log is continuously maintained since 2018 and currently carries ninety-eight entries. About forty-five percent of corrections originate from museums' own education teams noticing a discrepancy; thirty percent from reader-observers reporting different experience than what we published; the remainder from the cooperative's own quarterly review.

The reader-observer network — the index's distinctive editorial advantage.

The cooperative's most distinctive editorial resource is the reader-observer network — currently twenty-eight active teachers, eight parents and four home-schooling adults who file structured observation notes from their own programme visits. The network supplies the ground-truth information that distinguishes the index's ratings from a simple summary of what museums claim. The honorarium of EGP 200 per accepted report is paid out of the cooperative's annual budget; the network is the operational counterpart to the editorial-board work. We recruit additional observers through word-of-mouth at the schools the editors visit during the quarterly verification cycle; reader-observers commit to filing two to four reports per academic year typically.

The Egyptian Ministry of Education informal collaboration.

The cooperative's relationship with the Ministry of Education is collegial and informal, structured around the Ministry's curriculum-development unit's annual review process. The unit consults the index informally during the annual review and our methodology document is shared with the unit at the September revision each year. Nada's previous role at the Ministry is a known professional connection; we maintain the editorial distance that the documentary stance requires by not accepting any funding, consulting fees or formal status from the Ministry. The Ministry's curriculum-development director has visited the Minya office twice (in 2021 and 2024) as part of broader regional consultations.

The annual external audit.

Since 2022 the index commissions an annual external audit of its methodology by a rotating panel of two specialists — typically one museum-education academic and one curriculum-policy specialist. The audit reviews the year's ratings against the methodology and verifies the financial transparency note. The 2022 to 2025 audit statements have all been positive.

Cooperation with the Egyptian Disability Rights Association.

The cooperative has held a written partnership agreement with the Egyptian Disability Rights Association (EDRA) since 2021 covering the accessibility-audit dimension of the index's ratings. The EDRA reviews Mona Habib's annual accessibility findings before publication and provides written feedback that may alter the audit's published readings. In practice the EDRA's feedback has changed nine specific accessibility findings across the four years of the partnership. The EDRA does not fund the index; the partnership is editorial-collaboration only. The partnership agreement is available to subscribers on request and is summarised in the December transparency note each year. The cooperative also draws on the EDRA's published accessibility-standards documents (most recently the November 2025 inclusive-school-visit guidance) when designing the accessibility-audit checklist's annual revision.

How the index handles museum-programme suspensions.

When a museum suspends a programme between quarterly verification cycles, the cooperative's working response is documented in the methodology. The suspension is logged in the monthly bulletin as soon as the cooperative becomes aware (typically within two weeks). The programme's entry in the live index is marked as "suspended" with the suspension date. If the suspension is resolved within ninety days, the programme returns to the active rota with the prior rating; if the suspension extends beyond ninety days, the programme is moved to the archive section of the index and removed from the active table. Programmes returning from extended suspension are re-verified through the four-stage cycle before being re-rated. Five suspensions occurred during 2025; three resolved within ninety days and the programmes returned to the active rota, two were moved to the archive and have not yet returned.

The corrections log — open and continuously maintained since 2018.

Corrections to published ratings are issued within thirty days of confirmation and recorded in the public corrections log, continuously maintained since 2018. The log currently holds one hundred and twelve entries. Each entry includes the affected programme, the original rating, the corrected rating, the date of correction, the source citation, and the editor's brief note. About forty-five percent of corrections originate from museum education teams; thirty percent from reader-observers; the remainder from the cooperative's own quarterly review.

The annual external audit.

Since 2022 the index commissions an annual external audit of its methodology by a rotating panel of two specialists — typically one museum-education academic and one curriculum-policy specialist. The audit reviews the year's ratings against the methodology document, checks the corrections log for completeness, examines the verification records and verifies the financial transparency note against the cooperative's accounting. The audit panel publishes a brief external statement each January; the 2022 to 2025 audit statements have all been positive. The audit is an additional cost of approximately three percent of annual expenditure that the cooperative considers worth the credibility benefit for an enterprise whose value depends on the academic and educational community's trust in our ratings.

The data-licensing approach.

The index's quarterly tables and the annual ratings are released under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, free for academic, journalistic and individual-school use with citation. Commercial use — for instance, embedding the index in a commercial school-trip booking application — requires a separate licence. Two commercial licences have been granted since 2021 on negotiated terms appropriate to the specific use.

The annual reader survey — running every June.

The cooperative runs an annual reader survey in June each year. The survey captures structured feedback on the index's editorial output, the teacher-resources file's utility, the booking-process reference's accuracy, and the cooperative's response times for correspondence. The 2025 survey received one hundred and forty-two responses (a fifty-six percent response rate against the subscriber base at the time), which is the strongest single year for response rate in the cooperative's history. The survey responses inform the September methodology revision.

External programme-quality complaints, including anonymous submissions.

Where the cooperative receives complaints about specific programmes from parties outside the regular reader-observer network — for instance, an anonymous parent complaint about supervision standards at a workshop — we apply a structured verification framework before any rating change. The framework involves the relevant editor's direct verification with the museum's education team and, where the complaint raises safeguarding concerns, the safeguarding protocol described in the privacy notice. Eleven such external complaints have been received since 2020; four led to rating downgrades; three resulted in safeguarding-protocol referrals to the Ministry of Education; four were resolved without rating change after the museum's clarification.

Reader questions on methodology.