The minister of education has said that financial incentives for school principals and teaching staff are being considered in order to improve the standards of education. Speaking at the Islamic University in Madina Sunday, Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah said that his ministry was looking into setting up a commission to improve the standard of teaching staff and defining teacher skills taking the Committee for Medical Specializations as a model. Prince Faisal said that concerted efforts were underway to improve the education process in terms of motivation and training and increasing teacher professionalism. The development of education focused, the prince said, on four main programs of the King Abdullah Education Development Project approved two years ago, namely the development of curricula, teaching staff retraining, improving the educational environment, and attention to extracurricular activities. The prince also said that there were moves at the Ministry of Education to decentralize and hand “extensive authority” to regional ministry administrations to promote competition in education performance. “The ministry has ahead of it a grand mission to continue on the path of development and modernization and to work toward tackling the relative weakness in the production of the education system in terms of skills and knowledge so that it matches modern times and the increased demands of this time of excellence and distinction,” Prince Faisal said.
