Educating the Kingdom

Saudi Arabia has allocated 25 percent of its 2009 budget to developing its education sector and recently opened the doors to its showpiece learning facility, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). BMME reports on the country’s hopes of becoming a kingdom of knowledge.

“We're the first foreign company to be awarded an education services consultancy licence and we believe we could be a tremendous partner for Saudi. We have big plans”
-Dino Varkey, GEMS Senior Director

When students sat down for lectures for the first time at Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) this term, they became part of a new and exciting chapter in the country's history. The multi-billion dollar university is the first co-educational academic institution in the Kingdom and is the centrepiece of the country's plan to become a knowledge-based economy with world-class educational institutions. It is to be followed by four other new universities in Damman City and the provinces of Kharj, Shaqrah and Majmah, the building of 1,700 new schools and the setting up of education zones in the Economic City projects being built across the Kingdom. There are also plans to build the country's largest women's-only university to be completed in Riyadh in 2010 which would have 13 colleges, including facilities for medicine, dentistry, naturopathy and pharmacology and would accommodate up to 40,000 students.

A modern vision

The plans are key to the Saudi leader King Abdullah's goal to modernise his country and reduce its dependence on dwindling oil reserves and Western manpower. Currently, across the Kingdom, expatriates make up 63 percent of the white and blue-collar workforce. In October the former Director General of the World Trade Organisation described the Gulf's migrant workforce as the biggest issue facing the region today. And with unemployment in Saudi Arabia currently standing at 12 percent, according to the World Bank, the leader is keen to correct the imbalance in the workforce through the education of Saudi youth to international standards. Demand for education facilities is clearly buoyant in the Kingdom, reflecting the desire on the part of Saudi youth to gain qualifications. Oversubscription at the country's existing two universities King Saud University in Riyadh and King Faisal University in Damman has forced the government to speed up the building of new establishments. Meanwhile, this year, there was a 40 percent surge in applications from Saudi students applying for places at British universities reflecting the lack of facilities of equal calibre on their home soil. KAUST, which equals its Western counterparts in terms of its facilities and the kudos of its researchers, aims to fill this gap and encourage more Saudi students to gain their qualifications at home then use them to help develop their country's economy beyond oil.

The university's focus on science reflects the leader of the Kingdom's desire to build on the country's existing expertise in the petrochemical industry and expand into other areas of scientific research which could be key to building its knowledge based economy. It boasts the world's fastest supercomputer and a team of the world's top research scientists. Already the university has established research operations in five areas in which the country hopes to became a leading global centre of expertise: nanotechnology, applied mathematics, solar energy, membrane research and bioengineering. To enhance its international status, the university has also formed partnerships with top academic institutions across the world, including the National University of Singapore, the UK's Cambridge University, Stanford in the United States, France's Institut Francais du Petrole and London's Imperial College. The latter is one of KAUST's five "academic-excellence partnerships" and is worth US$25 million over five years. Under the terms of the partnership Imperial's Materials Department will provide a master syllabus for KAUST students in materials science and chemical engineering and will undertake collaborative research with KAUST academics. It will also provide KAUST researchers with guidance on what scientific equipment they require and will help them in the selection of staff for the department. In an interview with the Times newspaper's Higher Education Supplement, Neil Alford, Chair of the Materials Department at Imperial, described the partnership as "an opportunity to develop ties with the region and be at the inception of something that has the potential to make a huge difference in terms of scientific and cultural change."  Clearly KAUST's strategy to become a well-renowned educational institution is working. It has already attracted 70 professors and 800 students from abroad. What it must do now is increase the participation of Saudi students, which currently make up just 15% of the university's students. The ratio is expected to increase however, with the university mixed campus featuring 70 green spaces close to the Red Sea, an inviting prospect.

School work

It is not only in the higher education space where the Saudi government is focussing its efforts. It is hoping to rapidly expand the primary and secondary school sector where plans are underway to build approximately 1,500 new schools in addition to the 3,240 currently being constructed and another 200 that are under reservation. In total, Saudi Arabia plans to spend SR20 billion on building new schools for 1.7 million pupils. To put these figures into context, the country's 2009 budget includes US$32.6 billion that has been earmarked for the education sector – a massive 25 percent of the country's entire budget. King Abdullah also announced plans to create 204,056 new jobs in the education sector. In a statement published in the Arab News earlier this year, the country's Ministry of Civil Affairs stated: "The royal approval came after the Ministry of Civil Affairs presented a proposal to the king to improve the situation of teachers holding lower job levels in comparison to their qualifications", adding that it was hoped the reforms would "boost the morale" of teachers. To speed up the development of the primary and secondary education sector the Kingdom is entering into partnerships with private companies. A US$533 million contract with the China Railway Construction Corporation will see the building of 200 schools across the country to accommodate 150,000 pupils. The process is expected to take just 14 months. An article about the project in the Saudi Gazette reported the Deputy Education Minister Faisal Bin Abdul Rahman as saying: "The specifications of the buildings are in line with international standards and the aim is to provide a better educational environment for our kids."

Within the private sector, there is a strong interest from private sector education providers, keen to tap into the country's burgeoning education sector. Most recently the Dubai based company GEMS Education announced plans to build a raft of new schools across the Kingdom. Describing the potential he sees in Saudi Arabia's education sector GEMS Senior Director Dino Varkey told Arabianbusiness.com: "From a GCC perspective, Saudi is absolutely the market you want to be in, regardless of the constraints. Saudi today, as a proportion of its GDP, is going to be spending more on education than anywhere else in the world," he went on to say, adding: "We're the first foreign company to be awarded an education services consultancy licence and we believe we could be a tremendous partner for Saudi. We have big plans."
Many of the new primary and secondary schools in the country will be built within 'education zones' within the Kingdom's various Economic City Projects.

These are free zones designed to encourage the development of a knowledge-based economy by providing world-class residential, educational, business and industrial facilities. The first school to be built within such a zone will be the Freyssinet Saudi Arabia school to be built in King Abdullah Economic City at a cost of US$32 million. The state of the art school will span 16,928 square metres and will accommodate up to 1000 students of different grades. Meanwhile GEMS has also signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia's General Investment Authority (SAGIA) to manage a school within King Abdullah Economic City.

The message behind the investment in such facilities is best summed up by the statement made by King Abdullah in the launch brochure for KAUST, which, as quoted by the Times Higher Education Supplement, reads: "I wish to rekindle and spread the great and noble virtue of learning that marked the Arab and Muslim worlds in earlier times." Saudi's past as a centre of learning is set to be rekindled and, if successful, its future, beyond oil, will be as a knowledge based economy with an educated local population.