Expat schools to be streamlined

Jeddah: The Education Department in the Makkah region has launched a campaign to correct the statuses of 142 international schools that belong to expat communities, inspecting the qualifications of their teachers and their academic facilities.

The move was prompted after Education Minister Prince Khaled Al-Faisal decided to correct the statuses of all community schools in the region and bring all of them under the ministry’s supervision. The manager of an international school in Jeddah told Arab News that all teaching staff at his school have undergone tests conducted by the ministry. The manager said most expat female teachers have refused to transfer their visas to schools.

Some international schools are run by the embassies of foreign countries that have a large number of expatriates in the Kingdom, while others are privately owned and follow independent curricula.Options are available for schools that accept only the citizens of their countries as well as those which accept other nationalities, although priority may be given to the students of the community the school belongs to.