Chapter 2: Context of the Research
2.2 An Overview of Education in KSA
Education in Saudi Arabia is governed and controlled by the Ministry of Education, which was established in 1954 and provides public education free of charge to every citizen. There used to be two ministries responsible for education, The Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE), until 29th January 2015 when the new king, the Custodian of the two Holy Mosques King Salman, decided to merge the two ministries under the name of the Ministry of Education.
Public educational policy is derived from and based on the founding principles of Islam to seek knowledge and education. An example of how educational policy is underpinned by Islam is the following objective of education issued by the Ministry of Education:
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The objective of education: understanding Islam correctly and completely, implanting and spreading the Islamic doctrine, providing students with Islamic values and instructions, acquiring knowledge along with different skills, developing constructive behavioural tendencies; advancing society economically, socially, culturally, and qualifying members in order to become useful in the construction of their society. (Educational policy article 28, MoE, 1976, cited in Al- Sunbul et al, 2004)
Education is therefore designed in both structure and content in accordance with these principles, and the prevalent interpretation of Islamic rules. For example, co- education of girls and boys does not exist. The genders are strictly segregated in every way, including the use of separate school buildings and teaching staff.
The context of Saudi Arabia significantly affects the ways leadership and decision- making operate, being a centralized and culturally constrained educational system. The system is centrally administered by the Ministry of Education and additionally comprises 43 district offices in 13 administrative regions. Alshumaimeri (2001) notes: “All educational policies are subject to government control and supervision by the Supreme Council of Education. Curricula, syllabuses and textbooks are uniform throughout the Kingdom” (p.17). The MoE is responsible for policy- making, planning, staffing, providing materials for schools, and building the curricula, so that all public schools have the same materials, teaching and supervision, evaluation techniques and educational policy (Al-Seghayer, 2014).
Both public and higher education provide free education for all students, from kindergarten to university level. In public education, there are 7.45 million students enrolled in the KSA education system, in separate boys’ and girls’ schools (General Authority for Statistics, 2016). In public education, the years of study are divided into three stages: Primary (six years’ duration, from ages 6-12), Intermediate (three years’ duration, from ages 12-15) and Secondary school (three
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years’ duration, from ages 15-18). Private education is also available, paid for by the individual child’s family. The need and demand for education driven by the young population has required an increase in the number of schools all around the kingdom, and the country now has more than 32,000 schools. Beyond school, students can pursue their higher education in a range of universities and colleges distributed throughout the Kingdom. The number of Saudi universities was eight universities until 2010. Since then, several new institutions have been established, and the kingdom has now 28 governmental universities and 13 private ones (Ministry of Education, 2016).
To meet the needs of the increased numbers of students and meet the expectations of Saudi society about education reforms, education has received visible attention from the government since the establishment of the Kingdom. This has led the Ministry of Education to work on the development of its systems, bringing in educational projects and development plans to solve its problems and to compete with the educational systems in the rest of the world. Al-ameen and Palaiologou (2013) mentioned that “Saudi Arabian education is now going through large-scale reform in which leadership roles and responsibilities have become a key issue” (p.126). One of the fundamental drivers of the development of the education system is the political support from the highest level of political leadership.
This importance of the political support the Kingdom places on education is also reflected in the form of substantial material support. Since 2000, an increase in the education budget recognised the importance of the education sector in developing the nation (Al-Silami, 2010). The total budget of the Ministry of Education was SR 380 billion (£65 billion) for the year 2015, accounting for 19% of the state budget
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(Ministry of Education, 2016). Much of this budget was spent on education expenses, including books, infrastructure and programs, as well as teacher salaries. In addition to that, the government has introduced the Public Education Development Project in 2006, known as Tatweer, to infuse innovation and creativity into the design and development of sustainable solutions to the challenges facing the education system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A large budget (nine billion Saudi riyals, equivalent to £2 billion) has been given to Tatweer for the development of education. It is integral to the cultural shifts that are happening in KSA, in that a large part of its purpose is to provide all Saudi children and youths with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they need to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world.
Despite this heavy investment and continuing support, education in Saudi Arabia faces a number of challenges – practical and cultural – commonly found in all societies, especially those undergoing rapid development (Al-Seghayer, 2014). The heavily centralized educational system, with its top-down educational leadership approach hinders the professional participation of teachers in the different aspects of school development (Mullick, 2014; Shah, 2014). Thus, there is a disconnect on the one hand between MoE directives and expectations, and on the other hand, how teachers manage the constraints and limitations – some as a direct result of those directives – in practice.
As the current research focuses on the views of English-language teachers, the section below gives a more detailed account of that subject and its teaching in the Saudi context in relation to teachers’ professional empowerment in their teaching inside their classroom and beyond.
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