Education System in Saudi Arabia: Levels of Education and Gifted Education

The Education Ministry in Saudi Arabia controls the entire education system of the country, which is much centralized. The different levels of education are separate due to several reasons related to gender and culture. The education system in Saudi Arabia has been following all the modern trends and approaches for the all the general students and gifted students particularly as well. All these gifted students in the various public and private schools make up a huge portion of the schools. The education ministry wants to give the ultimate exposure to these gifted and talented students. Read on to know more about the education system in Saudi Arabia and the approach to gifted education.

Running head: EDUCATION
Education
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1EDUCATION
System of education in the Saudi Arabia
The Education Ministry in Saudi Arabia has the ultimate authority and it controls the
entire education system of the country. However, the education system of the country is much
centralized. The autonomous powers of the school is very limited indeed. The different levels of
education are separate due to several reasons related to gender and culture. The Education
Ministry of Saudi Arabia had been in charge of the boys’ education from 1952 to 2002. The
education of the girls was looked after by the General Presidency of Girls. There were some
differences between the curricula of boys and girls as well (Aljughaiman & Grigorenko, 2013).
In the year 2002, the decision of integrating of the General Presidency of Girls and Ministry of
Education came to existence by the Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz. There are generally
four levels of general education in Saudi Arabia. These are Kindergarten, Primary, Intermediate
and Secondary. The children whose age is between 3 and 5 years attend the Kindergarten
schools. However the attendance of the children in the Kindergarten is not necessary for
enrolling in the Primary education. However, the kindergartens ate not also considered as an
official part of the education system. The children can be admitted to the Primary education six
years of age onwards (Aljughaiman & Grigorenko, 2013). The children have to go through the
primary education system for six years and they are taught the subjects like science, religion,
arts, mathematics, social science and health. The Intermediate section has three grades and
Secondary education goes through three years. The children get out of the high school at around
19 years of age by appearing in the National General Secondary Test (GST). They will be able
to get admitted in the universities and other foreign educational institutions for higher degrees if
they pass the examination. The facilities like the special classes or special schools are not
available in Saudi Arabia unlike that of the Western countries (Alamer, 2014).

2EDUCATION
Gifted education in Saudi Arabia
The education system in Saudi Arabia has been following all the modern trends and
approaches for the all the general students and gifted students particularly as well. All these
gifted students in the various public and private schools make up a huge portion of the schools.
The education ministry wants to give the ultimate exposure to these gifted and talented students
(Hein et al., 2014). The public policies have been implemented by the education ministry so they
can give priority to the gifted education. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the process had
started to identify the gifted students and help to nurture their abilities in education (Alamer,
2014).However, this interest began to grow and it came to be implemented methodologically till
1990. The educational policy of Saudi Arabia told that all the students had their rights to develop
their own talents and flourish according to that. The education department began a program
called ‘Talent Search’ in 1995 and this was the very first program of such a kind. Many
education programs began to grow after 1998 by the initiative of the Education Department. The
King Abdul-Aziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity (Mawhiba) had
been established in the year 1999 (Abdul-Aziz, 2014). From then on the gifted education in
Saudi Arabia is run by two institutions- Mawhiba and Education Ministry. The Saudi Arabia
Education Ministry had approved the plan for the special classes in some of the public schools
that would be according to some special criteri (Alamer, 2014)..The Ministry had also initiated
the plan of opening some private schools in cities like Riyadh and Jeddah so the talented students
could be accommodated. As of now there are three schools for the gifted learners. These are the
gifted learners study in regular classrooms, gifted learners study in gifted rooms in regular
schools and gifted learners study in the gifted schools (Hein et al., 2014).

3EDUCATION
References
Abdul-Aziz, K. (2014). His Companions Foundation for the Gifted.(2008).". Mawhiba" Summer
Gifted Education Programs' Guide.
Alamer, S. M. (2014). Challenges facing gifted students in Saudi Arabia. Research on
Humanities and Social Sciences, 4(24), 107-112.
Aljughaiman, A. M., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2013). Growing up under pressure: The cultural and
religious context of the Saudi system of gifted education. Journal for the Education of the
Gifted, 36(3), 307-322.
Hein, S., Tan, M., Aljughaiman, A., & Grigorenko, E. L. (2014). Characteristics of the home
context for the nurturing of gifted children in Saudi Arabia. High ability studies, 25(1),
23-33.