JEDDAH — The Ministry of Education (MoE) celebrated the International Day of Education yesterday, Jan 24, under the slogan "Change course, transform education". Over the past two years, the Ministry has achieved 8 strategic shifts as it worked on preparing a globally competitive citizen and governed various educational businesses and projects. Aside from launching a first-rate e-learning system, and strengthening the citizens' international participation, the MoE has supported countless studies and research, while aligning its outputs with the labor market and successfully operating the digital transformation and cybersecurity programs. Regarding study plans and curricula, MoE has adopted 52 new curricula, 34 new books, and developed 113 courses, on top of evolving study plans for in-person education through the trimester system. Furthermore, it has increased the enrollment number for kindergarten students and boosted the attribution percentage in early childhood schools to 36%. Also, it has greatly managed scholarships and governance of its procedures and tools to serve students. When it comes to governance and regulation, the Ministry approved list of educational jobs, created General Administration for International and Foreign Education Offices, and the General Administration of E-Learning and Distance Education, and adopted a new system for universities, and processed 451 faltering educational projects, and the dispensed 671 rented buildings. Perhaps, MoE's most notable achievement is building the integrated electronic educational system during the pandemic through Madrasati (My school) and Rawdati (My kindergarten) platform — which has become an international one. This is in addition to creating 24 educational channels and broadcasting materials via satellite and YouTube. The MoE contributed to developing students' skills and qualifying them to perform international tests. This led to Saudi students achieving the second-highest growth between two courses in the international TIMSS tests. Saudi students also won 173 medals and prizes in international competitions, and the number of patents registered and granted internationally and locally to employees of Saudi universities reached 143 patents in 2020. The ministry has enhanced the presence of Saudi universities globally, with 6 universities in the Shanghai 2021 classification, 15 universities in the Times 2022 classification, as well as 14 universities in the QS 2022 classification. The MoE has placed scientific research at the forefront in the Arab world, as the percentage of scientific research publications has increased to 120% with more than 33,000 research papers. Also, it supported plans and strategies for human capacity development, by linking majors to the requirements of the labor market and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, in addition to transforming 50 community colleges into applied colleges. The MoE has implemented many digital transformation initiatives, through the establishment of digital and virtual platforms for education, assessment and training, besides Madrasati and Rawdati, it launched Central Test and Future Leaders platforms. This is in addition to the Safeer 2 system to serve students aboard on scholarships, and the Aamaly (My Business) platform for exchanging business and correspondence, as well as a communication application to automate internal procedures. The ministry also established a cyber defense center for the educational sector, which provided basic security solutions to 90% of the entities. The number of training seats in the field of cyber security has reached 400.
