Saudi ministry to launch new schoolwork system
Habib Shaikh

JEDDAH — The Saudi Ministry of Education is to introduce a new schoolwork system starting next academic year. The new secondary education system, which is similar to that of universities, has been tried in some schools over the past two years.

“This is a successful educational leap, which many students were not aware of in the beginning. One year later, their perception has completely changed,” said Hamid Al Malki, principal of Suhail bin Abdullah Secondary School.

“I think this system has a promising future. It will greatly help students understand their future academic and vocational life,” said Khaled Al Zahrani, an academic adviser.

“The system is successful. Students’ success rates in the new system were higher than those in the traditional system,” he added.

“The memorisation era has ended. A student can now depend on himself. The teacher-student relation is stronger with the academic counselling,” he added.

Khaleej Times carries this piece about a major change in the pedagogic methods to be used in Saudi secondary schools. Until now, the methodology of teaching relied primarily on rote memorization, with no space for criticism or even questions.

The new system’s success will depend on the quality of the teachers, even more than before though. It will no longer be sufficient to simply dictate a lesson and enforce classroom discipline (often violently, according to Saudi media reports). Teachers will be responsible for knowing their materials, not just the high points that appear on the exams. This will put great pressure on the teacher training programs.

These changes are not universally welcomed in the KSA. Traditionalists don’t like change of any kind, but these changes are feared because some feel they come at the expense of religious education, a topic which dominated the earlier curriculum.

Note that the article has a factual error: Girl’s education falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education, not the Presidency of Girl’s Education. That last body was abolished as a result of the March 2002 fire at a girls’ school in Mecca that killed 15 students. The Presidency, showing itself incapable of protecting the well-being of its charges, was stripped of its authority and simply wiped off the organizational chart.

See, too, the Saudi Gazette take on the curriculum change: New Syllabi to Revolutionize Education.