Illiteracy Among Women Drops to 20%

RIYADH, 9 June 2005 — A senior official said yesterday that illiteracy among Saudi women has dropped to less than 20 percent and 95 percent of the country’s young females are currently on the rolls of schools and colleges.

Khaled ibn Abdullah Al-Mashari, deputy minister of education, said there were 2.4 million female students pursuing their studies in nearly 16,000 public schools.

“Figures showed that the number of students who enrolled in public schools last year was almost equally divided between females and males,” said Al-Mashari.

He added that the Saudi government continued to work to improve both literacy and educational standards among women. The General Presidency of Girls Education in cooperation with other government agencies has stepped up efforts to boost literacy among women.

Referring to the new educational policies and programs of the Ministry of Education, he said, “Efforts continue to eradicate illiteracy and to enroll more female students in the schools. About 94.5 percent of girls in Saudi Arabia received elementary education in the year 2000, while 88.2 percent in appropriate age were enrolled in secondary schools in the same year,” said the deputy minister.

“The figures show improvement in recent years,” he said.

More than 12,000 schools operate in Saudi Arabia exclusively for female students. This is in addition to 180 teacher training institutes and 30 vocational training colleges for women. A number of women’s colleges and institutes have reported growing enrolment over the last few years.

The Ministry of Education has also launched an ambitious adult education plan with the sole aim of achieving 100 percent literacy by the year 2014. More than 73,000 women are currently on the rolls of 2,599 literacy centers set up across the Kingdom as part of adult education program.

The Kingdom has spent SR240 billion on education during the last 25 years. The Saudi spending on education — at over nine percent of the GDP compared with the world average of 5.08 percent — is one of the highest in the world in percentile terms.