News
Saudi Arabia investing in education
Saudi Arabia is moving rapidly ahead to promote high-quality education for its citizens including the building of more institutions of higher learning. The Kingdom’s long-term imperative is to become more and more a knowledge-based economy. While oil in particular, and chemicals and minerals in general, can help the Kingdom industrialize and grow over the medium term, looking strategically, it must be seen that nations do not sustainably raise their standards of living by only selling commodities. Wealth increases in nations that have been at the cutting edge of R&D, technology, innovation and knowledge in general, according to Khalid Al Falih, Saudi Aramco CEO and President, in a speech delivered in Riyadh on 19 April. In our country, he said, the transition to a knowledge-based economy cannot happen instantly; it will take time – certainly decades and perhaps generations to take hold, the more reason we should start now. It will be an added challenge that other nations are ahead of us and moving faster towards the knowledge economy, but with commitment and dedication we can overcome these hurdles. Clearly, high quality education is essential to lay the foundation for future growth in select knowledge based areas that can be targeted for investment. With four out of every 10 Saudi citizens 14 years old or younger, improvements must begin in primary school where a large proportion of our population needs to receive a high quality basic education before it is too late. And the improvements must continue at every stage through higher education. A measure of the challenge before us is that Saudi Arabia has fewer than 500 engineers per 100,000 citizens. Jordan and Kuwait have about twice as many engineers per capita; the United Kingdom has about 10 times as many per capita. A comparison of 8th-grade maths and science scores shows that Saudi Arabia lags badly behind the average of the top 20 countries in maths and science rankings. Fortunately, the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, is well aware of these gaps and is moving aggressively to promote his vision of high-quality and widespread education in the Kingdom, including the building of institutions of higher learning. The Kingdom’s new budget allocations for building schools and universities are unprecedented, including the Tatweer initiative which will bring a renewed focus on general education improvement including teacher training, math/science curriculum development, improvement in educational environment and increasing extra-curricular activities. At Saudi Aramco, we are seeking to do our part to prepare the Kingdom’s young people to be responsible participants in a future knowledge economy. Throughout its history, the Company has been a leader in building schools and providing quality education programs for our nation’s young people. During the past year we adopted a new Corporate Citizenship Strategy to streamline and modernize our longstanding efforts in corporate social responsibility. The Four Pillars of our strategy are: economic development, community support, promoting the Kingdom’s transition to the knowledge era, and environmental stewardship. The Kingdom’s young majority is the prime focus of the signature initiative of Saudi Aramco’s new corporate citizenship strategy: the Youth Talent Development Program. Our goal for this is to reach 12,000 youth by 2012 and as many as 200,000 by 2020 through transformative and engaging programmes. We will leverage Saudi Aramco’s capabilities to provide young people with extra-curricular experience to develop the character and skills to excel in the 21st century. Extra-curricular efforts are essential because Saudi students today up to age 18 spend 60 percent of their time in community or leisure activity and only 10 percent of their time in school. For children in the 10-12 age bracket, we will focus on additional learning opportunities to instil a love of the indispensable disciplines of math and science, skills in which the nation now suffers a serious deficiency. For adolescents in the age group 14-17, we’ll concentrate on character education, critical thinking and moral reasoning. The goal of many of Saudi Aramco’s corporate citizenship programs is to make volunteerism a national character trait: to make it something people confidently recognize in our society. The culture of volunteerism dovetails with successful entrepreneurship, including the habits of decision making, taking initiative, teamwork, and follow-through. Saudi Aramco aims to help parents and educators instil in our young people a stronger appreciation for the dignity of work. Combating unemployment will be successful only if our younger citizens embrace a work ethic and employers accept responsibility for promoting employment of Saudis instead of expatriates in such sectors as wholesale and retail commerce, food service and hotel work, as well as the industrial and electronic technology sectors. Employing Saudis in the service industries is essential if we are to gain the 4 million new jobs we need. In higher education, Saudi Aramco endows 10 professorships in energy-related chairs at Saudi universities. We sponsor numerous other student exchange programs, research collaborations and programs of technical and management advice for universities in the Kingdom and abroad, and we have established a University Relations Division for strategic management of our extensive efforts in support of higher education. The company is proud to have been played a major part in developing our new national treasure, KAUST. Almost uniquely, this is an interdisciplinary university, without the barriers of traditional academic departments. It is a hive of research collaboration involving major corporate and university partners from around the world. Based on information from Saudi Aramco. Report appeared in Arab-British Business, the fortnightly bulletin of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce. Main Colleges and Universities
Article reproduced with the kind permission of the Arab-British Chamber of Commerce |
 |