“If success does not need feet, but rather daring, then excellence and diligence are inseparable synonyms. Diligence is the cause of excellence, and excellence is distinguished by diligence.” With this firm wisdom on two firm feet, the Ministry of Education, led by Minister Dr. Hamad bin Muhammad Al Al-Sheikh, adopted its strategy that reflects the size of what the government of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz and Crown Prince, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Prince Muhammad bin Salman have provided. To serve and care for education.
And because Saudi education and all its outputs are monitored and followed up in all countries of the world, given the strategic and pivotal weight that Saudi Arabia assumes in all global forums, the issued international reports confirmed a major shift in improving Saudi curricula and purifying their content, and among the most prominent of these reports, The report of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, and the report of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, in addition to the international media, including the American Time magazine, the Washington Post newspapers, the New York Times, and others.
In the third episode, Okaz monitors “the effort of the last three years (36 months) of the Ministry of Education, and how the negative criticisms and proposals about the curricula turned into a positive path, and the world addresses them in an optimistic and motivating language that recognizes the volume of continuous development and modernization.
Addressing policy issues and making updates
The Ministry of Education follows up all the available reports issued by prominent international organizations around the world, and is still following them, and has taken the necessary measures to benefit from these reports to address the issues of the curricula raised and to make possible updates issued in their regard.
This resulted in finding a remarkable convergence between the objectives of the Kingdom's Vision 2030, and a percentage of what was stated in international reports; This facilitated the treatment of many aspects observed in the curricula. Efforts continued to build and develop the curricula according to criteria and standards to improve and develop the curricula in a way that achieves the objectives of the Human Capacity Development Program and enhances the contribution to achieving Vision 2030 and responds to fair, logical and acceptable proposals from educators and those interested in improving the curricula. This episode deals with the outcome of the curricula development processes and their findings.
International Center for Religion and Diplomacy
In February of 2021, the American International Center for Religion and Diplomacy prepared an urgent and brief report after reviewing a full copy of the new Saudi academic courses for 2020.
According to the CEO of the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy, the center provided the center's partners, sponsors of its activities, and supporters with a copy of that report in a desire to obtain more support for the center's efforts and programs with Saudi Arabia, which has already been achieved with the support of the training program – remotely – for the benefit of the Ministry of Education. Education Saudi Arabia and the amount of one million dollars.
The team of international organizations has been keen to document a copy of the report since its issuance, because it represents a pivotal shift and a major shift in the position of this organization regarding the Kingdom's efforts to develop curricula and to recognize the size of the qualitative shift in the content of these curricula.
The reward of a decade of effort
International Center for Religion and Diplomacy founder Dr. Douglas Johnston said: “After three years, the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy is pleased to report that the substantive reports submitted to the Saudi Ministry of Education for curriculum development appear to have been included in the 2020 curriculum.”
US Congressional Liberties Committee
The annual update report issued by the Committee on International Religious Freedom in the US Congress for late 2021 came to record a quantum leap in its position on the Saudi school curricula.
Through reviewing this report, it becomes clear that the real and radical shift in the official position of the US Congress, with regard to the Saudi school curricula, began with its 2021 report on the books of the 2020 edition, which the Saudi Ministry of Education worked on developing to correct the conditions of the books of the 2019 edition.
Big improvements and greater tolerance
A study issued in September 2021 found significant improvements in the content of Saudi textbooks, noting that the amendments came in the context of a larger wave towards greater tolerance, and many intolerant texts towards minorities and religious sects have been softened, and the books no longer make general judgments about societies. Non-Muslim.
She indicated that Saudi Arabia has made recent changes that can address long-standing aspects of religious freedom, including addressing the highly problematic content of textbooks and school curricula.
The mental image of developing Saudi curricula
The impact of the newly published studies on the 2020 curricula from various international organizations has been significant for those interested in the Saudi curricula in the international media. And eye-catching.
The intensity of many media outlets dealing with the Saudi curricula decreased. Time, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal took the lead in praising the progress achieved in the Saudi curricula. European media quoted citations from reports that dealt with the Saudi curricula.
Educational reform and continuous evaluation
Many articles, reports, and media investigations have been published to shed light on the development witnessed by the Saudi curricula, starting with the 2020 edition of the curricula. These positive articles were mainly published in the years 2020 and 2021.
There is a clear interest from the Ministry of Education currently in the quality of the elements of the educational process to improve its inputs by taking care of educational reform, continuous evaluation, and monitoring performance indicators to achieve the best possible educational outcomes.
UNESCO standards and reporting methodology
The reports followed a similar methodology in terms of survey and coverage, as the pages of the reports were distributed and classified according to the educational stage.
The reports varied in terms of the framework for covering the concepts, and the reports of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education were unique in linking the observations to a globally agreed upon reference, which is the “UNESCO” standards, but these reports generally reached the same exact points in most of their observations.
The team of international organizations and the reviewer touched a dominant feature of each report affected by the nature of the organization, and the reports of the Center for Religion and Diplomacy came to focus more on the values called for by the heavenly books.
The reports of the International Religious Freedom Committee came to reflect the features of the various reports in relation to the values sponsored by the committee and calls for the countries of the world to respect them.
A study of the issued reports showed a clear similarity between them, and a great deal of convergence on the issues referred to. The hearings of the International Religious Freedom Committee in Congress relied on the reports of the ADL and ICRD organizations mainly until 2019, after which the impact of the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in school education was shown, while other reports of organizations such as the Hudson Institute and the Human Rights Watch HRW and others targeted the media in a way essential.
Taher Al-Husari (Jeddah) @taher_ibrahim0
