http://www.arabnews.com/?page=13§ion=0&article=127412&d=15&m=10&y=2009
Thursday 15 October 2009 (26 Shawwal 1430)
Why do we close our schools for 266 days a year?
Fahd Amir Al-Ahmadi | Al-Riyadh
Students in Japan study 243 days a year, which is the longest
school year in the entire world. In Sweden, however, students attend school
only 170 days a year, making it the shortest school year in the world.
In Saudi Arabia, the annual number of schooldays was supposed
to be 180, but when you deduct two weeks of school due to swine flu, the number
of schooldays falls to 166. Further to this, when you deduct the four-week
examinations during the two semesters, the final result will be that there are
only 138 schooldays a year.
According to the 10-year calendar issued by the Ministry of
Education, there should be 180 schooldays this year, including the period for
examinations. But in fact, these days were eroded before the start of the year
by six weeks, including two weeks for swine flu and four weeks for
examinations. When you deduct these six weeks (42 days) from the 180 days
already scheduled by the ministry, the net schooldays will total only 138. This
is, by all means, a low figure. This means that both our students and teachers
will be idle for 227 days (not mentioning the additional 39 Thursdays and
Fridays during the academic year).
I thought of comparing our schooldays with those of advanced
countries and here is the result: Japan comes first in the number of schooldays
with 243 days of study in a year, followed by China which has 241 days. Third
is South Korea with 220, Israel is fourth with 215 schools days, then Germany
and Russia with 210 days each, Switzerland with 207, and Holland, Scotland and
Thailand with 200. It appears from these statistics that Saudi Arabia has the
least number of schooldays among countries in the world. Even the already-low
number of days (138) is liable to go down even more due to the usual absence of
students during the first days of school, before examinations and at the
beginning of each school semester. The sad thing is that this poor situation
does not seem to improve, judging by the academic calendar issued by the
ministry until the year 2018, which has the same number of days every year. We
realize that the ministry finds it difficult to schedule classes between
Islamic events (Ramadan and Eids) and those foreign commitments imposed by the
Gregorian calendar. But whatever the situation might be, priority should be
given to increasing schooldays, even if we have to open schools in the
evenings. The reduction of our schooldays is a squandering of our educational
energies and financial resources.
Please note that I have, so far, talked about the quantity,
not the quality, of education, which is a different subject. Students in Japan,
Germany and Russia are not only studying more than our students, but also
receiving a better quality of education on account of strong syllabuses and a
closer follow-up of individual student talents. If we cannot aspire to have a
similar education, at least we can remind the Ministry of Education that
quality is always more important than quantity.
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