Private schools blame Saudization for their financial woes

February 4, 2013

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Riyadh, Feb 4: About 13 private schools in Jeddah laid off staff and students after experiencing significant financial hardships following the decision by the Ministry of Labor to raise minimum wage for Saudis teachers, school officials said.

The closure of private schools will increase public education costs on the government.

“Private schools save the government SR12 billion annually, given the fact one public education pupil costs the government about SR 20,000 a year,” said Othman Al-Qasabi, chairman of the committee for private schools at Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The Saudization quota required from girls’ schools by the Ministry of Labor led to difficulties and hardships for these schools that had to raise their fees by 50 percent, which was rejected by many parents who drew their offspring out.

Private school Principal Al Zahra Girls’ School Buthaina Al-Ghamdi said the minimum wage decision has affected the school in terms of having to bear higher expenses, but not to the extent of closing it.

She said the school did not approve any increase in fees paid by pupils, adding that Saudi teachers needed training on the new developed curriculum.

Pupils of a closed private school would turn to public schools and that means more costs for the government and would also affect the quality of education in terms of having overcrowded classrooms.

“With the increase in the salaries of teachers it is not feasible for private schools that charge a pupil SR 8,000 or less a year to stay open,” Al-Qasabi said. “And with the fact most parents won’t pay more than SR 10, 000, the schools (the ones charging less than SR 8, 000) would close and their pupils would turn to public ones.”

Al-Qasabi, however, believes that increasing teachers’ salaries was a necessity, stressing the importance of incentives and motivation for teachers. Incentives play a major role in the educational process.

He said adding private schools teachers’ salaries are the lowest in Saudi Arabia relative to other jobs. He also called on the government to financially support private schools’ pupils in a way that expands the market, improves quality and reduces costs for the government.

It was reported the National Committee for Private Schools recorded a number of withdrawals from private schools as parents could not afford increased fees and preferred to enroll their children at public schools. Most of the closed schools are girls’.

“Most private schools owners are unable to bear the increase in salary,” said Farida Farsi, chairwoman of the committee for girls’ private schools at Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “They are small investors who rent residential buildings (villas) and opened private schools at their neighborhoods as a result of the Ministry of Education’s failure to accommodate all of a neighborhood’s pupils in its (the neighborhood’s) government schools.”

However, schools only have to pay SR 3, 100 of the SR 5,000 minimum wage as the remaining SR 2,500 is paid by the government’s Human Resources Fund.

“Many schools cannot afford the portion they have to pay, which is added to increased costs that are the result of stricter Civil Defense requirements of equipment and systems. The bankruptcy is due to several reasons not only the minimum wage decision. Some owners may have found it is the best solution.”

Malek bin Taleb, head of the national private schools committee, said the majority of private schools for girl closed their doors, while some others for boys will follow.

“Most of these schools will permanently leave the sector in the wake of the decision and the ensued regulations and instructions,” he added.

He said that more private schools will follow, given the Ministry of Education’s committee on increasing fees of private schools’ refrainment from listening to demands by the committee, stressing that the problem seems more explicit at girl’s school, where the required Saudization quota is close to 100 percent compared to boys’ schools.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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News Network
November 4,2024

firewestbank.jpg

Hundreds of Israeli settlers conducted a brutal attack in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah.

The settlers set fire to numerous homes and vehicles of Palestinians and then moved to the main road connecting Ramallah to other cities, targeting Palestinian cars passing by.

They stormed the city of al-Bireh, near Ramallah, and burned Palestinian property and vehicles.

A woman sustained injuries after the settlers hurled stones at her vehicle, according to Palestinian news outlets.

Tension has been running high across the West Bank because of Israel’s genocidal war in the Gaza Strip, which has killed at least 43,341 people, mostly women and children, since last year’s October.

The Monday settler attack came as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out.

“We warn of the grave danger posed by the plans led by the extremist occupation regime and illegal settler groups to displace the residents of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank,” Hamas official Mahmoud Mardawi said.

Israel's far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip last week.

Smotrich asserted that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

He repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.

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News Network
November 7,2024

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The Israeli regime has killed at least 40 people during new airstrikes against eastern Lebanese areas, besides targeting the country’s capital Beirut with fresh acts of aggression.

Lebanon’s health ministry announced the fatalities on Wednesday, saying 53 other people had also been wounded during the aerial attacks that targeted the country’s Bekaa Valley, including the city of Baalbek.

In early Thursday, the regime was also reported to have attacked Beirut’s southern suburbs, including a site adjacent to Rafiq Hariri International Airport.

The attacks came after the regime issued short-notice evacuation orders apparently directed at the residents of the areas, claiming that the areas contained facilities belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement.

Tel Aviv has been using similar claims on countless occasions since last October, when it markedly intensified its deadly acts of aggression against Lebanon, in order to try to justify the escalation. Hezbollah has, however, invariably refuted the claims.

Also on Wednesday, the United Nations warned in its most recent flash report on the humanitarian crisis caused by the Israeli atrocities targeting Lebanon that the aggression had “reached a critical point.”

The attacks have claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, which was “58 percent more than the 1,900 fatalities” that were caused by the regime’s 2006 war against Lebanon, the report said.

“Additionally, an estimated 1.3 million people have been displaced, both within Lebanon and into neighboring countries, 33 percent more than the number of people displaced in 2006,” it added.

Women comprised the majority of those who had been rendered homeless within Lebanon as a result of the Israeli attacks, the report noted.

It also regretted that the Israeli attacks had featured 78 assaults on healthcare facilities across the country that had claimed the lives of 130 health workers and injured 111 others.

In response to the aggression, Hezbollah has been staging hundreds of retaliatory strikes against the occupied Palestinian territories and the Israeli forces trying to advance on southern Lebanese areas.

The movement has vowed to sustain its strikes until the regime ends the escalation.

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