JEDDAH, 8 May 2007 — With the growing importance of English, the Education Ministry is trying to introduce the language in public schools at a younger age than what it is currently taught at.
The ministry began to teach English in the sixth grade at public schools two years ago and is now experimenting to see whether it should be taught in the fourth grade at boys’ schools starting next year.
“We did this experiment five years ago, without adding its grades to the GPA. It was successful in selected schools in Jeddah. But the decision to apply it was cancelled then. Now we will repeat the same experiment in cooperation with the Arabian Educational Publishing Company,” said Mahdi Al-Aardhi, head of the English language department at the Education Ministry in Jeddah.
The Arabian Educational Publishing Company is sponsoring the training of Saudi teachers in addition to designing academic books especially for the fourth grade. Five to 10 schools will be put n the trial next year. Chosen schools will vary between model and standard schools in different areas of the city to make the test run as exhaustive as possible.
“We hope that the experiment next year will be followed by the implementation once we have forwarded recommendations to concerned officials at the ministry,” said Al-Aardhi.
Private schools in the Kingdom teach English to children starting from the kindergarten level.
