JEDDAH — Tatweer Education Holding Company is a strategic investment company established in accordance with a Royal Decree to initiate massive projects for the development and improvement of the public education system in the Kingdom. One of the outcomes of this venture is Tatweer Educational Transportation Services Company, which aims to provide safe and reliable transportation for school students free of charge throughout the Kingdom, which was unheard of in Saudi public schools in the past. The problem of transportation exists in both government and private schools. Not all private schools offer transportation services, even though they demand exorbitant tuition fees. For years, families have been complaining of the chaos and stress they endure to get their children to school on time and back home again each day. With no school buses, the only options are for the frazzled father to juggle his work schedule and his children's school schedules or for some families to permit their teenage son to drive his siblings to school, which poses several risks. Some children resort to walking to school, which is far from being an ideal solution due to the poor and sometimes hazardous conditions of Jeddah's streets and the lack of adherence to driving safety rules by motorists, such as slowing down near schools and checking for pedestrians before turning into another street. “Not all parents can afford private drivers. My husband has to wake up earlier to take the children to school before going to work. He uses up his lunch break to bring the kids back home and rush back to his office before his lunch hour is over. It is stressful for him and he returns home after work feeling tired and frustrated. If we ask him to go somewhere for recreation in the evening he refuses because he is fed up of driving and prefers to just stay at home, rest and watch television,” said Amal Al-Harbi, a Saudi mother of six. Most families agree that it is indeed high time that all schools begin to provide transportation for their students. Even if you can afford the luxury, having a private driver does not solve the problem for young children getting to school. “My daughters are only nine and seven years old. I do not feel at ease for them to ride alone with the driver. I worry that he will say something wrong to them, or teach them bad habits like cursing or smoking, or even harm them, so I ride with them every morning and again in the afternoon. The ride to school every day is exhausting for me,” said one expat Syrian mother, Salma Al-Sibai. A mother of four girls, Lema Zain, has made an arrangement with her neighbor whose daughters attend the same government school. “My husband takes our daughters and the neighbor's girls to school in the morning and our neighbor brings them all back in the afternoon. For the most part, it has been working out all right, but there were instances when one father fell ill or when our neighbor got caught up at work and arrived up to an hour late at the school. So it is not a perfect solution, but we make do with it for the time being because we have no other choice,” continued Lema. The good news is that Tatweer Educational Transportation Services Company has finalized plans to provide public transportation for more than 1,200,000 students this year, in addition to the female teachers of the kindergarten and pre-school levels. Over the next five years, the company will expand its capacity to eventually provide transportation for all school students free of charge. Female teachers will also be offered transportation services at a minimal cost. Hopefully, these new services will put an end to the daily trouble of driving kids to and from school each day. A report in Al-Madinah newspaper stated that in the past three years the company had started to provide transportation services on a trial basis to around 600,000 students, and this endeavor was met with great success with many optimistic promises for the future. At this stage, 14,067 men and women who had been previously unemployed found stable jobs in this venture. Tatweer expects that in the final phase of the transportation services, over 40,000 new jobs will be created for bus drivers and supervisors or caregivers who accompany the students in the school buses. Ensuring safe and acceptable means of transportation for the nation's students has become a top priority for the Ministry of Education. Next month and for the first time in the Kingdom, a national forum will be held to study, discuss and debate implementing school transportation services at the highest standards. Examples from other countries that have already been providing such services for decades will be studied.
