Manama: Saudi Arabia’s education ministry is consulting with parents over ways to address the increasing problem of absenteeism in schools, especially ahead of holidays.
Students currently have three major school breaks, one in each semester and one between them.
However, the ministry noticed that several students tended to skip classes days before the official start of the holidays, raising serious questions for school administrators, teachers, families and the community in general.
Five proposals to amend the school calendar in a bid to reduce absenteeism have been sent by the ministry to parents, asking them to comment on them and to help choose one that ought to be applied, Saudi daily Al Watan reported on Tuesday.
Under the first proposal, both mid-semester breaks will stand cancelled and students will be given a one-week vacation between the two semesters. Students will have 16 study weeks and four weeks for exams.
The second proposal also seeks to cancel the two mid-semester breaks, but offers a two-week vacation midway through the academic year.
The third proposal calls for dropping the mid-semester breaks, but suggests a three-week holiday at the end of the first semester.
Under the fourth proposal, mid-semester one-week holiday breaks are maintained and students will get a break lasting one week between the two semesters.
The fifth proposal cancels the break in the middle of the first semester, offers a one-week holiday at the end of the semester and another one-week vacation in the middle of the second semester.
Sources told the daily that the results of the electronic voting thus far have shown parents favouring the second option that drops mid-semester breaks and instead provides a two-week mid-year vacation.
“The system had been applied in schools for some time before it was changed to accommodate two one-week breaks in either of the two semesters,” the source said.
In January 2014, newly-appointed Education Minister Prince Khalid Al Faisal had warned that principals who failed to address the absenteeism of students before and after school holidays would be dismissed.
The stern message sought to curb the tendency of students and teachers to take extra days off ahead of scheduled holidays and right after holidays.
Several teachers and students, particularly in high schools, tend to extend their holidays in the absence of strong punitive measures from school authorities.
Saudi Arabia, like most of the other countries in the Gulf and Middle East, has invested massively in education reform and has been pushing for higher learning standards and greater commitment from students to turn into achievers.
However, high absenteeism levels have been amid the most formidable challenges facing the Gulf countries in this respect.
In Kuwait, Mariam Al Wateed, the education ministry undersecretary, in 2013, said that students’ class attendance would be used to determine their grades. Under the decision, students who do not present valid excuses for missing classes are punished by having their lack of attendance counted against their grades.
The ministry had earlier considered various ways to get around the situation but decided to factor in attendance in the determination of grades after those steps invariably failed.
In Qatar, education authorities in December 2011 warned schools against any relaxation of attendance rules in schools.
Allowing students to flout attendance norms amounts to wasting valuable time and education resources and instilling in them negative traits such as laziness, reliance on others, mismanagement of time and lack of readiness to learn and move forward, the authorities said.
Under the education rules, students who do not show up for class for two consecutive weeks or for 30 days over the full academic year are not allowed to sit for the final exams.
