Authorities have approved plans to offer lands to private schools from those allocated for the Ministry of Education. According to some special regulations envisaged in the plan, the Ministry of Education will form a permanent committee in each education department.

The committee will comprise the education director as its chairman and three members representing the administration of school buildings and private education, and the school planning department.

The committee will study the applications submitted by the landowners and the education facilities, or landowners with licenses in their possession, allowing them to build private schools on their lands.

Provisions of the regulations give the committee the necessary powers to study the applications and visit their locations on the basis of the plans submitted by the concerned parties.

The plan should be for the whole neighborhood. It should clarify the education facilities existing in a radius of 2 km, and the location of the land where the school building is intended to be built, and the other owned or rented government schools in the area. The provisions stipulate that no other school facility should be in existence in the same radius where the private school is meant to be built, or has got the approval for the purpose.

In addition, the provisions state that the lands allocated for other education facilities should be enough to build government schools to replace the other rented schools at a later stage. The application will not be approved if the land is enough to build only one education facility in the same neighborhood.

The committee’s visit should also be in compliance with the viewpoints of the Ministry of Education and submitted to the ministry’s agency for school buildings within 30 days.

The agency will study the documents to check that all of them meet the regulations and are then submitted afterward to the minister of education or any other equally person in authority to give a decision on the application.

The director of education in the region will, after the approval of the education minister, sign an agreement with the landowner.

The agreement should include that the new land allocation for an education facility does not mean “not applying the Law on Property confiscation for public use in case the ministry needs the land, and paying compensations according to the applicable regulations.”

The agreement will stipulate as well not taking advantage of the land for uses other than specified, and that the study classrooms and the relevant services should be for the same education levels stated in the license.

The plans to build the education facility should be issued by an engineering office registered at the Ministry of Education.

The concerned party should embark on implementing the project within one year of the minister’s approval otherwise the approval will be canceled. However, the education director can demand the extension of the approval for an extra one year for ground reasons.

The education department will address the competent municipality or secretariat to extract the necessary construction permits after meeting all requirements.