Abu Dhabi: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Education has promptly moved to guarantee continuation of education even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and has begun setting up contingency plans and awareness campaigns to be carried out following suspension of classroom-based tuitions and temporary closure of academic institutions involving 8.4 million pupils. This was revealed by the Saudi Minister of Education, Dr Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sheikh, as he presided over a virtual and extraordinary meeting of the G20 member-states on Saturday.
Shedding light on the Saudi experiment on distance education as a solution offered to all students in the kingdom, he said remote learning has been taking place through the interactive national education portal, which witnessed more than 53 million visits, and the YouTube Ein educational channel that witnessed 61 million viewers for remote lessons.
Digitally-administered content
“It further provided students 20 TV channels, presenting recorded lessons suiting all student categories across the Kingdom. This indicates that the eight million-hour of content for tuition, three million digitally-administered content and 3.5 million virtual classrooms have not stopped,” the minister said.
The minister of education further said that in order to guarantee a fair access for all, measures to fill the digital gap in local communities have been carried out, in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. The communications companies, on their part, have provided students with 30,000 tablets, in addition to free Internet data packages, for accredited educational platforms and provided 100,000 SIM chips, he added.
Resilient syllabus for tuition
The experiment, the minister said, has been very fruitful as all stake-holders learnt a lot while carrying out these solutions, which were mainly based on strong infrastructure, a system of resilient tuition syllabus with its mechanisms and timetables, as well as a comprehensive and concerted response by the ministry to meet the needs of all concerned, in addition to availability of a strong of communications systems.
The minister further said that there are well-organised plans to get out of the crisis. He sought increased investments in e-education infrastructure and a robust approach to methods and devices of digital education.
He also highlighted the significance of the role played by families in backing up distance education, taking into account promoting the framework of the general education system, standards and prerequisites that add to the progress and development of learning outputs.
Accessibility to good education
Al Sheikh said through continuation of cooperation, exchange of experience and ideas and sharing best-practices, Saudi Arabia will be able to build a stronger and more resilient academic system that will guarantee accessibility to good education, particularly during emergencies and times of crisis.
The meeting witnessed participation of the G20 ministers of education, who, for their part, expressed significance of sharing and tackling the main themes that underscore the importance of what the world is experiencing today and adopting alternative experiments.
The meeting also discussed the importance of continuing with all possible efforts to support education systems across the globe, ensuring distance-learning systems and supporting and developing infrastructure for continuous education, in addition to providing all students, parents, guardians and teachers with all necessary psychological and social support systems — including financial support.
