RIYADH, 4 December 2007 — Teflah Aldosary, a 14-year-old Saudi girl, is preparing to join a boarding school in the United States after her parents failed to find a proper school in the Kingdom. Despite being Saudi, Teflah’s Arabic skills are limited. Add to that the Ministry of Education’s policies regarding enrollment in private foreign schools in the country.

The policy dictates that Saudis seeking to enroll their students in international schools must petition the ministry every year and obtain permission. This means that a student isn’t guaranteed permission to continue their education where they started it; even if the ministry gives the permission one year it can decline it the next.

This is what happened to Teflah; after three years of permission to attend a private international school in Riyadh, the ministry declined permission in the fourth year. Fortunately for this student, the family can afford to send her abroad to complete her studies. Some families, however, can barely afford to send their kids to private school locally, much less abroad.

Teflah’s Arabic skills are limited because she spent the first 10 years of her life in the US when her father was a student at the University of Missouri. After coming back the Saudi Arabia in 2003, Teflah’s parents enrolled her at an international school in Riyadh. Three years later the ministry decided to reject the petition.

“The ministry justified its decision by claiming that Saudi nationals are not allowed to register their children at foreign schools,” said Teflah’s mother, Jamilah, who works at a hospital in Riyadh. A ministry bureaucrat later explained to Jamilah that Saudis could only go to a private foreign school for three years.

Teflah’s parents then decided to enroll their daughter in a Saudi private school, but the language issue came up as a considerable hurdle.

“The private local schools teach some curriculums in Arabic and my daughter can’t read or speak it,” said Jamilah. “Teflah has been out of school now for three months and the ministry is blaming us for having planned to continue her education where she’s gone for the past three years.”

Now the parents decide to send the girl to a boarding school in the United States.

“We are sending Teflah to the US; she will be going to live with an American family during the weekends and go back to the boarding school on week days,” said Jamilah.