The Ministry of Education is set to have the National Assessment Center (NAC) reexamine 7,400 recently-graduated teachers who failed to pass a teacher selection test. The test to select candidates for work in 15 cities follows ministry standards measures to reform education, and achieving a pass was recently made an imperative for employment. The ministry accepted, however, teachers' objections that they were not notified of the “importance” of the test. Some teachers, who recently graduated from the Education Faculty at Hail University, said the NAC led them to believe that the important aspect of the test was the payment of the SR200 fee. “The ministry seemed to emphasize the interview as more important than the test, which according to the ministry was only a trial,” said English teacher Abdullah Al-Mishal. “We are graduates of educational faculties and studied for four years to work in schools,” Mishal continued. “The ministry paid each teacher SR48,000 in monthly allowances for four years.” Al-Mishal said that some teachers, himself included, would soon start applying to schools in other GCC countries, notably Qatar, UAE and Kuwait. Ahmad Al-Luhaidan and Hammad Al-Tameemi said the SR200 fee was too high and that in other countries “the fee would not exceed a third of that which we paid”. “The center received SR1,480,000 in total for the test,” Al-Tameemi said, “and the ministry has spent in total SR672 million on 14,000 teachers in different subjects for their study and qualification. But only 6,000 teachers have passed.”
