Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — Amid reports of some international schools shutting down and some others facing crisis for non-compliance of the Ministry of Education’s requirements for a proper premises, there are some schools who have won accolades from the ministry for meeting almost all the requirements. Jeddah’s New Al-Wurood International School is one among them.

Speaking to Saudi Gazette, school officials said that the ministry’s regulations have given a golden opportunity for genuine players to run their institutions successfully in the long run. “We took the ministry regulations as a challenge and started implementing them with a very positive approach five years ago. The school has secured a reasonably much higher benchmark points for meeting the said requirements, according to S.M. Noushad, manager of the school.

Attending a recent panel discussion on ministry’s regulations, the school officials said that the regulations have been instrumental in enabling the school to achieve a qualitative leap in both the academic and administrative realms. “Regularizing status of schools in line with the ministry’s set norms is a must to take advantage of the benefits under the Kingdom’s Vision 2030. The tendency of deferring (implementing the regulations) on the part of some managements is most often the villain that pushes the institution to crisis after crisis and that ultimately ends up with its closure or similar situations,” said Noushad.

He noted that only a small percentage of international schools are operating on ideal campuses built for educational purposes. All the remaining schools are operating in rented buildings built for commercial or residential purposes. For such schools, government had started a scientific scheme of converting such buildings for school purpose such that it creates a total school environment. For this, the ministry assigned the task to Tatweer Company, which introduced Tadarruj program. It classified the Kingdom’s regions into three categories on the basis of the infrastructure facilities and the quality of what the schools are offering at both administrative and academic domains.

As part of the ministry regulations, all schools have to register details of their students in Noor program. Then, schools have to furnish details of the facilities arranged for these students. Tatweer has panel of competent engineering consultancy firms to make inspection and on-the-spot assessment of the infrastructure facilities and they give benchmark on the basis of how the school has met the requirements. The engineering consultancy firm then reports it to Tatweer. Then, a team from the ministry would make an inspection tour for a scientific and meticulous quality assessment exercise. These are all done online and hence there is no room for manipulation. Tatweer will give marks out of 75 and ministry’s process of evaluation marks are out of 25. “New Al-Wurood secured excellent marks with boys’ section scoring 76 points and girls’ section 75 points, and these include 22.5 points out of 25 from the ministry’s school quality evaluation process.”

Bushra Kader, vice principal of the girls’ wing of the school, noted that the international schools can also take advantage of STEM education, which is an approach to teaching and learning that integrates the content skills of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “We also follow STEM, which is a focus of Saudi schools under the Vision 2030, so as to meet the benchmark of the vision. Our school found a place in the list of advanced schools that are following this approach across the Kingdom,” she said.

The school has got appreciation from the ministry for introducing Robotics, according to Principal in Charge Peter Ronald. “We introduced robotics and artificial intelligence as part of science from fifth grade. This was in tie up with IIT, Mumbai, and it is based on creativity and innovation,” he said.

On his part, Head Master Sunil Kumar said that there has been a tremendous response from both students and parents for introducing Edu Cinema as part of the value-based education curriculum since five years. In collaboration with Bangalore based LxL Ideas, an edu-media company, the school screens 10 theme-based cinemas for each grade in an academic year. “Watching of cinema follows in-depth review, discussions, feedback and rating with active involvement of students and teachers,” he said. School Admin Officer Anees Rahman also attended the discussion.

There are around 1,200 students at the school. In the current scenario, the school managed to maintain a balance between students who are leaving mainly from the higher classes after imposition of dependent’s fee, and admission of more children of newly arrived parents in the lower classes.