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 27,2024

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Gaza health authorities say Israel’s military has "erased” over 1,400 Palestinian families in the besieged territory over the past year.

The Health Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that the Israeli regime "completely erased about 1,410 families, numbering 5,444 people, from the civil registry during the same period.”

It said that there were 3,463 families with only one survivor, while 2,287 families had more than one survivor.

In northern Gaza, Israel’s warplanes have continued dropping bombs over Palestinian families, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

It said one airstrike hit a family home in Jabalia, causing numerous casualties on Tuesday.

According to Gaza's civil defense agency, at least seven people were killed and several others wounded in the attack.

Another person was killed in a strike on a house in nearby Beit Lahia, a town in northern Gaza, which has been declared “a disaster area" by the municipality due to "the Israeli war of extermination and siege, and it has no food, water, hospitals, doctors, services, or communications."

The health ministry said, “Israeli forces killed 14 people and injured 108 others in three massacres of families in the last 24 hours.”

“Many people are still trapped under the rubble and on the roads as rescuers are unable to reach them.”

International organizations and leaders believe that Israel’s genocidal war, now in its second year, is a deliberate attempt to destroy the population of Gaza.

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News Network
November 26,2024

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The extremist Israeli finance minister has called for the occupation of the Gaza Strip and halving the population of the Palestinian territory that is reeling from almost 14 months of genocide.  

Bezalel Smotrich, who has a history of racist statements against Palestinians, made the controversial remarks during a conference of the Yesha Council settler group on Monday.

“We can occupy Gaza and thin the population by half within two years,” through encouraging the so-called “voluntary emigration," he said.

The racist minister also urged the Tel Aviv regime to use its favorable ties with the incoming administration of US President-elect Donald Trump to implement the plan.

“Occupying Gaza is not a dirty word,” he further claimed.

Once the success of the “voluntary emigration" is proven in the besieged Gaza Strip, it can be replicated in the occupied West Bank, he added.

Last month, Smotrich urged the full annexation of the West Bank and Gaza, asserting that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.

Israel launched its brutal Gaza onslaught on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

However, nearly 14 months into the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has failed to achieve its declared objectives of finding captives held in Gaza and eliminating Hamas.

So far, the occupying regime has killed at least 44,235 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 104,638 others, in Gaza. 

It has been committing the war crimes of starvation and of intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population in the besieged territory.

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News Network
November 21,2024

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Hamas says the Israeli regime’s sole objective lies in “erasing” the entirety of the Palestinian population from across the Palestinian territories.

Khalil al-Hayya, a ranking official with the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement, made the remarks to the Palestinian al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday.

“The occupation targets everyone—it strikes hospitals, civil defense, women, children, and the elderly,” he said, adding that the regime sought to “empty Gaza of its residents, and displace the Palestinian people to fulfill its dreams of building a Zionist Jewish state across all of Palestine.”

The remarks came amid the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the coastal sliver that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“This unprecedented aggression in modern times evokes scenes from the dark ages of human history, having crossed all red lines and exceeded every expectation of brutality in the modern era,” the Palestinian official lamented.

He also regretted that the regime had added “systematic and dangerous starvation to its aggression, falsely claiming before the world that it allows 250 [aid] trucks into Gaza daily. In reality, the number of trucks is far fewer.”

Hayya, meanwhile, regretted that “scenes of children torn apart, women screaming over their children, and heart-wrenching destruction have failed to stir enough humanity to stop these crimes.”

He decried the United States for vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that are aimed at bringing about a potential ceasefire in the war, saying this indicated Washington’s “partnership in the aggression” and a simultaneous siege that the Israeli regime has been enforcing on Gaza.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official asserted that, despite what the Israeli official is after, Hamas would not hand over the regime’s captives “without [the regime’s] stopping the war.”

He called Netanyahu “the main obstacle” in the way of cessation of the aggression, saying the Israeli premier “blocks any progress for political reasons,” and citing his preventing conclusion of a ceasefire agreement in July.

Hayya also warned that the regime sought to expand the war beyond Gaza, but asserted that its goals are “impossible and will never happen.”

“Today, the enemy exposes its true intentions of extermination and displacement, but it will fail,” he stressed.

“The Palestinian people are resilient and will not surrender, as they believe in their humanitarian and political cause. The enemy and its allies will not succeed in achieving their goals. This steadfast people will endure, and the occupation will not prevail against them.”

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