Al-Jazirah daily

The Department of School Affairs at the Ministry of Education is responsible for merging and closing schools. Many schools do not have the minimum number of students but still operate. Several newspapers have recently carried news stories about these schools.

The reason these schools have few students is because of their location and Saudi demographics. The population in most Saudi towns is small and as a result of this the number of students in schools located in towns is not very large. The government builds schools in towns so that children living in remote areas have access to education and do not have to travel long distances.

I suggest that the Ministry of Education should think outside the box and stop dividing the Kingdom’s education into the three stages of elementary, intermediate and secondary. We should have only two stages: elementary and secondary. We currently have separate school buildings for the elementary grades and others for the intermediate grades. We also have separate principals for elementary and intermediate schools.

If we look at most countries around the world, we find that they do not divide education into three stages. They only have elementary and secondary education. The elementary stage has eight grades and the secondary four grades. Why does the ministry not consider adopting a model such as this? It could start with low-populated areas. This model would help the ministry reduce the number of school buildings by at least 20 percent. There will be no need for intermediate school buildings.

I believe the implementation of this model on the ground would not be costly because all the ministry has to do is optimize the space inside current elementary school buildings and build more classes to accommodate more students. The ministry also needs to revise the curricula so that it is able to fit elementary and secondary education.