The biggest problem facing our educational system is that our methods have not changed. We never solved these problems. We are like a sick man without a proper diagnosis. And based on the wrong diagnosis, the doctor prescribes the wrong medicine. The doctor doesn't try to re-diagnose and the patient doesn't seeks a second opinion.

Therefore the problem of education in our country is not in the few years the student spend studying a certain subject but rather the low grasp of what he or she has learned due to many factors, including the low standard of teachers. Teachers are reckless and unwilling to put in more effort. The system is a whirlpool of experiments. Knowing that there is no relationship between what they learn and their chances of employment after graduation, students are not very keen to learn. At the end of the day, all they need is a certificate. Those who have certificates and wasta (connections) will be employed regardless of their abilities.

Any solution that does not put an end to the deterioration of our educational system will be futile and costly. Many people in our society will carry certificates of poor education.

The failure to correct our educational system will cost us. We all know that the recent decisions made by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to make temporary employees permanent, increase employment opportunities in the government and pay assistance to the unemployed are aimed at resolving the unemployment problem. The royal decisions will result in an extra financial burden on the government as a result of the creation of more jobs in the public sector. This will be a long commitment on the part of the government. Circumstances may change. Oil prices may not remain as high as they are today, and the volume of oil exports may also drop. This may take us back to the days when the budget suffered deficits and development projects shrank. The salaries of government employees constitutes a large chunk of government spending.

The present expansion of employment in the public sector will be at the expense of the government jobs in the future. Future graduates will have few chances to be employed by the government. If more than 400,000 secondary school students are expected to graduate this year, you can imagine that the future graduates will have very little chances of getting government jobs.

Attempts to rectify the loopholes of our education system through training programs by the Human Resources  Development Fund have failed. They have also failed in increasing job opportunities for Saudis in the private sector.

We need brave measures to save our education system from its present regression. Otherwise we will face a big problem in the future. The problem will not be solved by employing more people in the public sector. We have to take real reform actions to improve the quality of our graduates. It is pointless to say we have made progress while everybody knows that our education system is bad and is in need of courageous steps to rectify.