OK, I had to pull out an early draft of my doctoral dissertation for this, but here goes.

Let me state up front that education, though valued, was out of reach of most Egyptians during both the Ottoman and British period -- the illiteracy rate was still around 90% at the time of World War I, which, of course, reflects that most children either could not read nor write or forgot the skill.

Although Egypt was nominally an Ottoman province, from the 1820s onward it was autonomous (this was guaranteed after the Ottoman viceroy Mehmet Ali sent his son at the head of an army in mid-decade to threaten Istanbul; this both guaranteed him the post until his death in 1849 and the right to pass the governorship to his heirs in perpetuity, who were granted the title of Khedive). The Ottoman-Turkish nature of the ruling class was expressed in various ways--it wasn't until 1918 that Egypt had a ruler who spoke Arabic well enough to conduct affairs of state in the language, so there was a weird bifurcation where the political elite would speak both Arabic and Turkish and official documents and decrees were issued in both languages, and usually also in French. This is a whole other set of issues, but let it percolate in the background as an illustration of how complicated things were. The basic takeaway here is that Egypt had its own thing going on that bore little if any resemblance to what was happening in the rest of the Ottoman Empire.

Education was poorly funded under the Khedives, but its importance was well understood. Probably the main difference between the Khedives and the British is that the former were much more pragmatic and recognized that there wasn't an inherent class-intelligence link.

The basic school was called a kuttāb; these were relatively ad hoc institutions that were overseen...kinda...by district inspectors. They taught reading and writing--as one can guess from the literacy statistics, most children did not attend. However, promising students from the countryside could get scholarships to be sent up to the Amiri (royal) primary schools in provincial capitals. Only those who had attended primary school could then attend secondary school, and graduates of secondary schools could then either enter the civil service or attend one of the professional schools that were established over the 19th century (the School of Medicine, the School of Midwifery--which credentialed woman as doctors, and this is a story that is far too little known in my opinion!--Schools of Agriculture, Mining, Engineering, etc.).

Students who performed well could go all the way to completion on the state's dime...erm, piaster...including receiving housing and a small living stipend.

I should emphasize that this wasn't entirely altruistic--the khedival family was one of the largest landowners in the country, and their ideas for developing Egypt had profit at the heart. However, the manner in which this was accomplished--by trying to identify the best candidates to make this happen--was far more pragmatic and egalitarian (which is to say, they tried--we can certainly argue about how effective this was in practice) than it was under the British.

Money was also at the heart of the British project. Khedive Ismail spent lavishly during the cotton boom of the 1860s and wound up indebting Egypt to British and French banks; the British and French took control of Egypt's finances in 1876 and introduced severe austerity measures and, in 1881, the military objected to the degree to which internal policies were being dictated by foreigners. There was an uprising, and the British invaded to put down the rebellion. They were only supposed to stick around long enough to ensure the stability of the government, but wound up being in Egypt until 1923 (formally, although there is a case to be made that Egypt didn't fully get its sovereignty until the Suez crisis of 1956). However, because Britain was also one of the main advocates for not allowing further breakup of the Ottoman Empire (for fears of increased Russian power in the Mediterranean), until 1914 they were only in Egypt as "advisors"--this system is known as the Veiled Protectorate. With the mutual declaration of war between Britain and the Ottoman Empire in 1914, Egypt was made a protectorate, but this really just formalized what had been in place since 1882.

Since Britain's goal was to squeeze every ounce of profit out of Egypt to repay its debt to British banks, education was flat funded. School fees--out of the reach of most Egyptians--were introduced at all levels except the kuttāb -- primary school fees were 5 Egyptian pounds (LE) a year, secondary and professional schools LE 15; the average income for a family at the time was between LE 12 and 36, so education was out for most students. By 1905, state scholarships were removed entirely, and in 1907 free education was abolished.

In terms of the actual curriculum, most professional schools had switched to English after 1882 -- the school of medicine was the lone holdout, retaining its Arabic curriculum, but was forced to switch in 1897; the same year, the school for women was transformed into a school for nursing (the idea of training women as doctors had come from the strict gender segregation in Egyptian society; under the British, the idea was that "modern" Egyptian women needed to see a "proper"--meaning male--doctor, as European prejudices held that women just didn't have the right temperament to be doctors). Most schools also had British directors (or British-credentialed Egyptians), and a mix of European and Europeanized-Egyptian faculty.

There really isn't a whole lot of accessible material out there on the education system in Egypt at this time for me to recommend. Robert Tignor's first book was about education in Egypt, but it's from the 1960s and woefully out of date. Judith Cochran's Education in Egypt is ... well, it exists, and that's all I'm gonna say. Hibba Abigideiri is the expert on women doctors, but her book, while excellent, is very much an academic monograph and probably not the most accessible book for a general reader.