Some 1,700 male and female teachers and school administrators, representing 50 secondary schools Kingdom-wide ended their 15-day training course this week in preparation for launching Saudi Arabia’s most important educational revamp: the King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Project for Developing Public Education (Tatweer). The training course took place in three different cities: Taif, Abha and Jeddah.

The Kingdom has allocated around SR9 billion for the Tatweer project and is planning to take education to new horizons to cope with transformations around the world. Teachers, students’ advisors and school principals take different courses that can enable them to deal with their students from different angles to help them succeed at all levels.

According to Abdul-Wahhab Al-Mikaimzi, chief of Public Relations in the Ministry, the project consists of four axes: developing teachers’ skills, developing curricula, enhancing school activities, and improving school environment. “Four separate committees are working on these sides,” Mikaimzi said. He pointed out that the government has done its best to spread knowledge and science everywhere in the Kingdom. “This leadership is trying to develop education and is employing the latest possible technology to help build Saudi citizens at all levels. If education is a never-ending process, we believe that developing that education is a necessity,” Mikaimzi added.

“The new project aims to make students analyze and think to come up with solutions. A teacher’s role will be to just monitor the class and distribute roles among learners,” Ali Sambo, director of Educational Training Department at the Taif General Directorate of Education clarified. He added that teachers would now provide students with information sources either in libraries or online to make students carry on their own research. Sambo explained what new classrooms and school environment would look like: “Imagine that students are searching for a certain piece of information. The modernized classroom is divided into three groups. Group A is using computers to find that information, group B is reading books for the same purpose, and group C is writing what conclusions the two groups have found. This is what we want our students to do in their classrooms,” he explained.

Other committees are working on making model schools ready for hosting this project. “We want to have a very strong start since this will affect the whole project. We don’t want teachers and students to simply admire the project from afar, but we want students’ guardians to interact with them closely on the project, which will change the face of education in Saudi Arabia,” one of the officials added.

Dr. Naif Al-Roomi, head of the Tatweer project, stressed that the new 50 schools will reflect how our schools ought to be. “Principals in these schools have no other choice but to succeed,” Al-Roomi said, adding that collective work is the secret for success.

Mohammed Al-Kinani The Saudi Gazette
 

Last updated: 27^th October 2008