Saudi Arabia PRINCESS NOURAH UNIVERSITY
6,000 NEW SCHOLARSHIPS ACROSS 17 COUNTRIES As announced by the Saudi education minister Dr. Ahmed al-Issa in June 2018, a new phase began in Saudi Arabia's scholarship program. Quoted by Al Arabiya, the minister said the 13 phases of the King's overseas scholarship program started that month, adding that “this stage focuses on qualitative specializations in artificial intelligence, cyber security, air transport and health.” The new phase, offering 6,000 scholarships in 17 countries, will help build qualitative human resources of Saudi youth through educating and coaching them in well reputed international universities as an important source to support the programs and initiatives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 program. According to Dr. Jasser al-Harbash, Deputy Minister of Education for Scholarship, “distinguished students can have a scholarship immediately through applying to elite universities.” The official added that students who have full scholarship in a recommended university abroad will have all fees and expenses fully covered by the ministry. Altogether, Saudi Arabia provides scholarships for 150,000 students abroad in over 60 countries.
DEVELOPING HUMAN CAPITAL
VISION 2030: EDUCATION IS A KEY ELEMENT
“EDUCATION IS A CORNERSTONE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF SAUDI ARABIA.” THESE WORDS BY THE AMBASSADOR OF THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA TO HUNGARY, MOHAMMED A. ALMATRAFI ARE WELL REFLECTED IN THE EDUCATION GOALS OF THE KINGDOM’S VISION 2030 PROGRAM, A PLAN – INITIATED BY HRH CROWN PRINCE MOHAMMAD BIN SALMAN – TO REDUCE SAUDI ARABIA'S DEPENDENCE ON OIL, DIVERSIFY ITS ECONOMY, AND DEVELOP PUBLIC SERVICE SECTORS SUCH AS HEALTH, EDUCATION, INFRASTRUCTURE, RECREATION AND TOURISM.
administrative environment in the Ministry of Education and its departments, approving decentralization of the administration, delegating powers to
departments and schools to serve the education system. Developing rules and procedures are to ensure work seriousness and discipline in education system, promote justice, and reward excellent performance.
SAUDI WOMEN WIN HAJJ HACKATHON The Saudi Arabia Hajj Hackathon, organized by the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity, Programming and Drones, broke the Guinness World Record this summer in terms of the number of participants, including entrepreneurs, designers, developers and innovators, topping 2,950 from over a hundred countries. As reported by the Saudi Gazette, the first prize of SR 1 million (USD 266,000) of the Hajj Hackathon 2018 went to four young Saudi women ahead of an Egyptian and an Algerian team. The three best teams were recognized for their outstanding design focused on improving the services of Haj with their own unique ideas. The Saudi women team presented an idea for solving the language barrier problem among pilgrims as they introduced an application that makes it easier for pilgrims to translate signboards to any language without having to connect to the Internet. The organizing committee added an extra award worth SR 150,000 (or USD 40,000) for a tents management application to the ‘IOO7’ team from Saudi Arabia.
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Top regional universities An article by the QS Asia News Network (‘Vision 2030: Saudi Arabia shifts from oil to higher education’), points out that one of the great objectives of the plan is the modernization of the curricula and standards of Saudi educational institutions from childhood to higher learning and that by 2030, Saudi Arabia aims to have at least five universities among the top 200 universities
Serving the future Of course, the overall objective to be achieved through the modernization of the education system is to help the transformation of the country’s economy with an eye to the post-oil era. With that in mind, the Vision 2030 plan highlights the significance of education and its relation with the development of the Kingdom’s economy as follows: – the education sector is considered as one of the vital sectors that has close connection with society and has strong connection in developing national economy; – education is contributing to the transition of the economy from dependence on one source of income to an economy depending on mind-sets with high skills, creative, and productive human energies; – the education system encourages dependence on reliability and safety resources, programs and projects, opening up investment opportunities, and eventually generating professional opportunities; – education is contributing to developing human capital as well as to acquiring the requirements and needs of the labor market.
EMBASSY OF THE KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA IN HUNGARY - TWITTER @KSAEMBASSYBUD FACEBOOK KSAEMBASSYBUD WEBSITE SAUDIEMBASSY.ORG.HU
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in the world. In this respect, the country is already doing well in the Middle East. The QS Arab Region University Rankings 2018, featuring close to 150 universities and highlighting the best of them in the region, lists Saudi Arabian universities in leading positions: the American University of Beirut (AUB) claims the top place, followed by three Saudi Arabian universities, namely, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (No. 2), King Saud University (No. 3) and King Abdulaziz University (No. 4).
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The Vision 2030 plan includes ways of educational development such as developing teaching methods that focus on the learner not on the teacher, and concentrate on inculcating skills, personality development, improving confidence, and promoting spirit of creativeness. It is to develop an attractive, preferred and stimulating school environment, connecting it with supportive and integrated services systems. It also includes comprehensive education for persons with disabilities, aims to provide pre-primary education opportunities and expanding them, providing kindergartens and activating links to the education system. Vision 2030 is also aimed at restructuring the education sector, modernization of systems, instructions, and bylaws to control curricula development, staffing teachers in educational services, organizing the process of educational supervision, and continuously raising the competence of development and vocational training. In order to make the changes more effective, Vision 2030’s objectives include improving and developing the
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