High percentage of absenteeism likelyTAIF: About five million students and 450,000 teachers return to school Saturday after the two-week Eid Al-Adha holiday. With many families still to return from their travels, however, a high percentage of absenteeism is expected, and flight delays due to the departure of hundreds of thousands of Haj pilgrims from the Kingdom could exacerbate the matter. Ministry of Education had previously warned educators that Ministry of Civil Service regulations counted employee absences on the first day back at school as two days' absence, but Education sources said it was “up to individual schools whether to accept excuses for being absent on the first day after the Eid break”. “A flight delay or canceled reservation is usually regarded as an acceptable excuse, in which case the absence is counted as one day's emergency leave,” the sources from the Education Ministry's personnel department said. The Control and Investigation Board (CIB), however, said it did not regard flight problems as a legitimate excuse, and warned that 200 inspectors have been tasked with checking attendance at public schools. Saudi schools had initially been scheduled to reopen on Nov. 22, but King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, extended the Eid break by five days.
