Saudi Gazette report

RIYADH — King Saud University, represented by the King Abdullah Institute for Research and Consulting Studies, and the Saleh Abdullah Kamel Humanitarian Foundation, signed an agreement to support the implementation of the International Professional Certificates in Teaching (IPTC) project.

The signing ceremony was held at KSU headquarters in Riyadh on Wednesday. Under the agreement, King Saud University will provide scientific support for the project, while the foundation would extend generous support to implement it.

The project aims to adopt a new pattern in the professional development of those implementing educational curricula and its developers, including teachers and educational specialists. This is through the model of IPTC professional certificates.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Badran Al-Omar, president of the university, said that this agreement embodies the integration between the university as a house of knowledge expertise with the private and non-profit sectors to achieve common goals in accordance with the Saudi Vision 2030. “The agreement comes in line with the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman and Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman to strengthen the Kingdom’s presence in global humanitarian work, which is an integral part of the Saudi Vision 2030, especially in the field of developing human capabilities.

On his part, Abdullah Saleh Kamel, chairman of the foundation’s Board of Trustees, said that the support extended to the project is in line with the foundation’s vision of caring for sustainable endowment projects and maximizing the impact of educational outputs as a teacher is the cornerstone of the educational process.

The nucleus of the project is to ensure qualifying about 2,000 male and female teachers in Egypt, which aims to build a comprehensive system for the development of male and female teachers through the model of professional certificates and programs for acquiring the necessary competencies at the advanced levels that educators need in their diverse fields and specializations.

Four alliances will join hands in implementing the IPCT project. They are King Saud University in its capacity as a global house of expertise in professional development; ISESCO, which groups 54 Muslim countries; the Saleh Kamel Humanitarian Foundation, the strategic partner of the project with its generous support, and the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education, which will contribute its expertise in implementing the project in Egypt.

The project is based on a modern scientific and educational intellectual framework, as it adopted the latest contemporary trends in adopting the competencies and professional skills approach. It addressed the performance gap between university academic preparation and experience requirements for the labor market, and the scientific framework for competencies was built according to the best international standards.