RIYADH, 6 January — A major study on the future of education in the Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia conducted by Arab Bureau of Education for the Gulf States (ABEGS) has called for bringing about substantial educational reforms on priority basis to enable the Gulf states to cope with the challenges of the new world order in the 21st century. The ABEGS study was released here Thursday.
The ABEGS is a cooperative venture created by the joint efforts of the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states. Of late, it has emerged to be one of the prominent sub-regional organizations in the Arab world to promote education, science, IT and documentation. The Gulf states through ABEGS have intensified efforts to unify their educational policies and to boost the process of coordination to promote modern education in the region.
An ABEGS member state, Saudi Arabia, which has spent a whopping sum of SR240 billion on education during the last 25 years, has been playing a pivotal role to unify the educational systems of the Gulf countries. The Kingdom’s expenditure on education is one of the highest in the world at over 9 percent of the GDP compared with the world average of just 5.08 percent.
The national budget of Saudi Arabia for 2001 announced recently has set aside a staggering SR53.3 billion for education and manpower training, which is 8 percent more than the allocation made for the sector in the last fiscal budget (2000). This investment will ensure better education free of cost for the citizens of the Kingdom. Today, the country can boast to have eight modern universities, 100 colleges and more than 25,000 schools.
The study entitled “Previewing the future of education in the Arab states of the Gulf” gives an overview of the educational infrastructure of the Gulf countries. The study said that the education planners of the six Gulf states will be facing major challenges while overhauling the whole educational systems. The first challenge will be as how to preserve the Arab Islamic identity of the region, while redesigning the curriculum.
Another challenge, according to the study, will be to bring about major reforms in the educational systems with an aim to lay added emphasis on technical education to be taught with the help of IT tools and techniques as per world standards. The plan to set up computer clubs and departments in different academic institutions of the GCC countries including Saudi Arabia is a forward step in this regard.
The study has welcomed the move of the General Conference of the ABEGS, which has set up a special commission for foreseeing and evaluating the future educational policies of the Gulf governments and to advise them accordingly. The ABEGS General Conference, convened biennially, is composed of the ministers of education from the six-nation GCC.
This special commission has announced to undertake five major studies primarily with an aim to find out the general trends of education in the Gulf. These studies will cover the general trends of education in the GCC states, general trends in educational reforms on global level, important growth indicators in the GCC countries, demographic projections needed for educational planners etc.
