DAMMAM: A specialized agency will be appointed in the beginning of next academic year to evaluate the progress of a new credit-hour system that has been implemented in selected secondary schools. This was announced by Naif Al-Rumi, undersecretary for planning and development at the Ministry of Education, at a forum on secondary school education that began in Alkhobar yesterday.
“A royal decree says that after three years of implementing the credit-hour system in 74 secondary schools an evaluation report will be prepared on the merits and demerits of the system, prepared and submitted by a specialized consultancy firm,” Al-Rumi said.The planning and development department in the ministry will make plans to extend the system to other secondary schools if the results are favorable, he added.
He said the Credit Hours Project, the Sciences and Mathematics Project and the Comprehensive Curricula Development Project were prepared under the framework of the King Abdullah Project for the Development of General Education. The project for overhauling the general education was approved in February 2007 with an allocation of SR4.2 billion.
Al-Rumi said the credit-hour system would include teaching management, career and life skills that would enable students to successfully deal with various situations in actual life.
The forum with the participation of 300 delegates from the Kingdom and other Gulf countries started discussions on various papers yesterday though its formal opening by Prince Jalawi bin Abdul bin Musaed, deputy governor of the Eastern Province, is scheduled for today.
In a paper on the problems faced by secondary school principals, Homaid Al-Ahmadi, assistant director general of education in Madinah, complained about the inadequate school environment, the shortage of administrative staff, workload of school principals and a lack of inducements for teachers.
