JEDDAH, 3 March 2008 — A 10-man team from the Jeddah College of Technology (JCT) began a visit to the City College of Brighton and Hove (CCBH) in the south of England yesterday to attend seminars relating to the introduction of apprenticeship training in the city’s colleges.
The delegation, led by JCT dean Dr. Mansour Al-Maiman, will attend five days of technical seminars and discuss the development and introduction of apprenticeship training into Jeddah’s colleges.
The visit is part of a twinning arrangement set up between the two colleges in 2007. Late last year, eight students and two academics from the British college visited JCT on a five-day inaugural visit to establish a regular student exchange program between the two institutions.
The Jeddah delegation comprises a number of experts and heads of department reflecting a long predicted change in the balance of subjects in the Kingdom’s higher education curricula. The visit also underlines a move toward encouraging young Saudis to train in engineering and develop vocational skills needed to underpin the Kingdom’s technical development.
The team will visit the departments of tourism, electrical engineering, automotive engineering, quality assurance and English language at the CCBH, which specializes in vocational post-high school training in several fields, including automotive engineering — a subject of special interest in Jeddah.
