JEDDAH, 13 September — Four private schools in the city have been ordered closed for violating licensing and safety regulations. The school owners were fined SR200,000. Mohammed Al-Qarshi, head of the committee for private schools, said two of the schools in north Jeddah were found operating without a license. The other two had reopened without permission after having been closed by the authorities earlier.
Al-Qarshi said he summoned the school owners for questioning and also to get an undertaking that they would not reopen the schools. The charges against them included operating in buildings which lacked safety devices or arrangements and teaching syllabi that did not conform to Education Ministry’s directives. The schools, catering mainly for expatriate children, were operating in rented buildings.
Al-Qarshi said the committee members who are drawn from the education department, police and girls’ education, have stepped up inspections in residential districts particularly in poor neighborhoods where several schools are reportedly functioning illegally.
These schools tend to attract low-income people looking for cheap alternatives to expensive international schools.
The owners of the illegal schools must return the fees they collected from students, according to a member of the committee. The fee charged from each student is SR1,000. The committee had earlier closed 10 illegal schools in Jeddah. Some of them were found conducting mixed classes for senior students.
In July, Education Minister Mohammed Al-Rasheed ordered three international expatriate schools closed — one in Riyadh and two in Jeddah — for violating rules and instructions. The three schools, whose names were not disclosed, have been asked to pay a fine of SR50,000 each.
The Riyadh school was shut down for organizing a mixed ceremony of boys and girls at a public rest house on May 8. The ministry described the function as immodest. "It violated the regulations of school functions and the articles of school license," the ministry said.
One school in Jeddah was closed for halting studies in the middle of last academic year. The ministry acted against the second school in Jeddah for opening a new department to teach American syllabus last academic year without a license. The school was also accused of issuing two different certificates to a girl student with the same date.
