How Saudi Arabia is reforming education through technological investment

In recent years Saudi Arabia’s education sector has received the highest proportion of government spending of all areas of the economy. In line with the goals of Vision 2030, the country’s overarching development strategy, the government has rolled out multiple reform programmes aimed at raising the quality of teaching and curricula, and improving student attainment levels. The education system is being revamped to better prepare the national workforce to compete in the increasingly technology- and information-driven global economy. Instilling technological proficiency alongside critical thinking, problem solving and analytical capabilities will be key to equipping the population to thrive in a shifting global economic landscape.

Technology is also central to developments in education delivery. Interactive software, online and distance learning programmes, and digital classroom tools are rapidly altering teaching and learning dynamics and broadening access to high-quality education. In line with these changes, physical and digital infrastructure is being upgraded, and private investment invited across the education spectrum as the government moves to align the education system with competitive international standards.

Structure & Oversight

The Ministry of Education (MoE) is the chief authority in Saudi Arabia’s education sector. Under the MoE’s jurisdiction, the Technical and Vocational Training Corporation (TVTC) oversees technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions. Both the MoE and the TVTC are monitored by the Kingdom’s Education and Training Evaluation Commission, an independent body that reports to the prime minister.

The new Universities Law was brought into force in 2019 with the aim of providing a regulatory framework that facilitates the development of higher education in the country. The law offers universities and private colleges a relative degree of administrative, academic and financial autonomy, allowing them to tailor curricula, fees, fundraising initiatives, research and other operational fundamentals to their specific needs. Universities can now establish investment companies both to aid profitability and reduce the need for public funding. The MoE hopes that the new law will encourage prestigious foreign higher education providers to establish branch campuses in Saudi Arabia, thereby raising the standard of tertiary curricula and broadening access to high-quality education for middle-income families who perhaps lack the financial resources to send their young adults overseas for study. Enforcement of the new law will be overseen by the University Affairs Council, established in February 2020 and made up of individuals from various government ministries and the private sector.

Sector Breakdown

The five stages of Saudi education consist of pre-primary (ages three to five); primary (ages six to 11); lower secondary (ages 12 to 14); secondary (ages 15 to 17); and tertiary (ages 18 to 22). TVET is optional and can begin at either the secondary or tertiary level. Compulsory education begins at six years of age and lasts for nine years.

Saudi public schools dominate the education landscape, and in 2019, 80.3% of primary and secondary institutions were in the public sector. Public education is offered to all Saudi nationals free of charge, but private institutions exist at each level.

Public and private education is overseen by the MoE. The ministry determines standards, teaching requirements and curricula; and delegates administrative duties to departments of education, directorates and education offices spread across the Kingdom’s 13 regions. Public and private schools adhere to the national curricula as determined by the MoE. An exception is international schools, which accounted for 6.2% of primary and secondary schools in 2019, and generally follow US or UK curricula. Saudi nationals are permitted to attend international schools. While those establishments enjoy relative autonomy, they are required to teach Arabic language principles, Islamic civilisation studies, and Saudi geography and history for a minimum of one hour per week.

Vision 2030 lays out plans to expand the role of private institutions in the pre-primary, primary and secondary segments from its current level – at approximately 12.5% – to 25% by 2030. Preliminary steps are being taken to devolve authority across the education space, with a number of schools being granted a relatively high degree of financial, curricula and administrative control, similar to the allowances established in the new Universities Law.

Enrolment & Infrastructure 

Enrolment in pre-primary education in Saudi Arabia is low but has increased considerably in recent years. According to the World Bank, in 2007 gross enrolment, expressed as a percentage of the population belonging to the qualifying age range, stood at around 11.3%. By 2020 – the most recent year for which data was available – that figure had nearly doubled, reaching 21.8%.

In a bid to establish a solid educational foundation for the Kingdom, the MoE aims to raise enrolment in pre-primary education to 90% by 2030. The influx of women in the workforce is stimulating increased demand, as a greater need for daycare for pre-primary aged children is being met by significant rises in nursery staff numbers. For the MoE to achieve its enrolment goal, an estimated 1500 new pre-primary facilities will be required by 2030.

Primary education enrolment is consistently high, given that this represents the beginning of compulsory schooling. Gross enrolment in 2007 was 100.4%, peaking at 119% in 2014 and settling back at 100.2% in 2020, with a completion rate of 99.3% that year.

Of the total population in the age range 12 to 17, 116.5% were enrolled in secondary education in 2015; the figure was 112.6% in 2020, with 77.2% completing at least the lower secondary portion. Furthermore, the World Bank’s gender parity index shows that the ratio of female to male students in primary and secondary students was 0.97 in 2020. According to the General Authority for Statistics (GaStat), the number of schools in the pre-primary to secondary range was 29,431 in 2019 – a high number made necessary by gender segregation, which begins at primary age. Gross enrolment in tertiary education has also seen marked increases, rising from 32% in 2009 to 71% in 2020. The numbers are similar when divided by gender, with female enrolment at 36% in 2009 and 74% in 2020, while for males, it was 28% and 68%, respectively. As of 2019 there were 62 higher education establishments in the Kingdom, 28 of which were public institutions.

There remains room for improvement in terms of raising enrolment in TVET institutions. That said, data from GaStat displays an upwards trend. The number of new students in TVET courses rose by 21.4% from 86,108 in 2017 to 104,525 in 2018, then by 11.5% to 116,567 in 2019. That year there was a total of 227,373 students enrolled in TVET courses, dispersed throughout 227 institutions. In recent years the TVTC has partnered with a host of major local and international companies, such as Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Electricity Company, Toyota and Mitsubishi, in a bid to tailor TVET curricula to the needs of employers.

Recent Reforms

The MoE is prioritising raising the quality of education delivery and attainment at all stages of the system, and is committed to ensuring that all children receive an education that will build the country’s human capital. Saudi Arabia participates in several international standardised exams such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), and tracks other indicators on performance and quality. The MoE uses this data to make informed policy decisions to improve the delivery of quality education.

In an effort to raise teaching standards, the MoE introduced a new licensing system in July 2019. To obtain a licence, teachers must pass an exam, while phased salary increases are available only to teachers who undertake specified professional development courses. In addition, the TVTC is working to ensure that instructors in TVET institutions and universities possess the skills required to cultivate student capabilities that satisfy the demands of the workforce and align with the aim to transform the country into a digital and information economy.

In September 2021 reforms to the curricula including new learning pathways in secondary education and the Human Capabilities Development Programme (HCDP) were announced. The HCDP is composed of 89 measures designed to facilitate 16 of Vision 2030’s core initiatives. The three pillars of the HCDP – to develop a strong educational foundation, prepare the labour force for local and global competition, and provide lifelong learning opportunities – will be applied through the entire education system and workforce. The pillars aim to encourage an appetite for knowledge, skills and achievement. Focused, personalised career guidance will be offered to secondary and tertiary students, while the government has also set the target of seeing two of the Kingdom’s universities enter the world’s top 100 by 2030.

In 2021 the MoE and the National E-Learning Centre, in partnership with international e-learning platforms Coursera, Edx, Udacity and Future Learn, rolled out the Flexible Learning Pathways initiative to work in tandem with the HCDP. The programme is designed to strengthen education and vocational training, while offering reskilling and upskilling options to the workforce, thereby broadening career prospects. Through a custom-built digital platform, students and employees are offered stackable micro-credentials across 10,000 courses and an array of subjects, including cloud computing, app design, systems analysis, psychology, emotional intelligence, arts, media, business management and entrepreneurship. The announcement came amid efforts by Saudi Arabia to increase its focus on interdisciplinary study, with the US Ivy league model – which fuses science, technology, engineering and mathematics education with social sciences, arts and humanities subjects – cited as a successful example of how such a format enhances critical thinking, problem solving and creative capabilities.

Public Expenditure

Historically, the education sector has received the largest share of government funding, but the amount allocated has been decreasing in line with government spending cuts aimed at reducing the country’s deficit. In 2019 the sector received SR202bn ($53.9bn). Between 2020 and 2021 the amount dropped by 3.8% from SR193bn ($51.5bn) to SR186bn ($49.6bn). That trend continued into 2022, with the sector receiving SR185bn ($49.3bn), which amounts to approximately 19.4% of the overall budget – the highest proportion of all GCC members, and significantly greater than the OECD’s average of 12.1%.

Decentralisation and privatisation are key in the government’s economic development strategies aimed at reducing government spending. In recent years this has seen public schools handed over to private entities. Although the government still subsidises private institutions, its per-student outlay for public schools is SR25,000-30,000 ($6670-8000) compared to SR15,000 ($4000) for private schools.

In addition, qualification criteria for the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme, which was launched in 2005 and in its first decade enabled around 200,000 students to study at overseas universities – primarily in the US – have been tightened. Funding is now restricted to students accepted for study at one of the world’s top-100 universities or into programmes in the top 50 in their field globally. Meanwhile, the government plans to fully remove its subsidies for private school teachers’ salaries by 2023, increasing the need for private investment to ensure schools are able to compete in securing high-quality teachers.

Private Investment

The opening of the education sector to private financing and involvement presents attractive opportunities for investors, with foreign companies and institutions now permitted 100% ownership of Saudi Arabia-based education facilities. Moreover, the Kingdom boasts the GCC’s largest consumer market, and by 2025 the share of its population in the primary-to-tertiary education age range is forecast to reach 11.2m, up from 10m in 2018. In addition, rising average household income means that more of the population will be able to afford to pay for education. This, coupled with growing appetite for international education among Saudi nationals, has driven expansion in the sector, with the private segment experiencing a compound annual growth of 3% between 2015 and 2018 – a figure higher than that of public schools for the corresponding period.

Al Motaqadimah Schools Company (MSC), a Saudi private education entity, has been active in the market. In January 2020 the entity announced deals worth SR2.9bn ($733.1m), including an agreement with Bahraini asset management firm Asma Capital to jointly establish an education investment company and a cooperation agreement with Google for Education that will facilitate the strategic expansion of its presence in the Kingdom’s education sector.

Collaboration

The National Centre for Privatisation (NCP), established in 2016, is inviting education-focused public-private partnerships (PPPs). These represent good business for foreign investors, as local partners can facilitate easier passage through Saudi regulatory, operational and recruitment processes. PPP opportunities include the construction of public schools and institutions by private partners, and the transfer of operational and financial responsibility for public facilities to private entities.

One recent example is when GEMS Education, a Dubai-based private education company, acquired Saudi Arabia’s largest private education operator Ma’arif for Education and Training through a joint venture with Hassana Investment Company, the investment arm of the General Organization of Social Insurance in 2019. Together, they plan to pump $800m into the construction and renovation of public and private schools across the Kingdom by 2031. Similarly, in 2020 MSC signed a cooperation agreement with Saudi state-owned real estate developer Tatweer Buildings Company to construct, operate, and maintain 58 education facilities over the course of three academic years, catering to around 70,000 students and creating 5000 jobs. Furthermore, in January 2020 MSC signed an agreement with the Ministry of Investment – at the time the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority – for a partnership to develop and market investment opportunities in the education space.

Market Consolidation 

The MoE’s Tadarruj scheme, introduced in 2017 to raise the quality of education and training services, as well as the standard of related infrastructure, significantly tightened building specifications for private education establishments. Up to 30% of existing facilities have been deemed unfit for purpose, giving rise to opportunities for mergers and acquisitions, with many small-scale operators that have fallen short of the new specifications unable to fund the necessary upgrades. Three Saudi private education companies – the National Company for Learning and Education, Alkhaleej, and Ataa Education Company – invested a combined sum of over SR246m ($65.6m) in deals that saw each absorb or purchase controlling stakes in multiple private education and training companies during 2020 and 2021.

Blended Learning 

The broad and accelerated adoption of e-learning methods made necessary by the pandemic should prove beneficial moving forwards, with blended learning, which refers to the integration of e-learning and educational technologies with traditional teaching methods, seen as key to raising the quality and versatility of education curricula.

Following the 2020 completion of the government’s Future Gate initiative, which saw schools connected to an online learning management system, Saudi education institutions were relatively well prepared for the pandemic. After the closure of educational institutions on March 9, 2020, virtual schooling became the mode, with exceptions made for students with special requirements. Each student was given access to the government’s Madrasati platform, which contains various e-learning tools and materials. A World Bank study carried out into the MoE’s response to the pandemic reports that of the 18,000 students it surveyed, 98% logged onto the Madrasati platform during their school’s period of closure.

However, there remains a recognition of the importance of in-person learning in developing vital social skills. With schools re-opened, it will be important to strategically and incrementally implement blended learning to preserve the benefits of classroom dynamics, while maximising those presented by e-learning and technology’s ability to provide immersive, interactive, student-centric learning experiences.

Outlook

To exact such fundamental changes to education delivery requires an ongoing investment in tailored and practical professional development programmes for teachers. Public and private educators will also need progressive investment strategies to keep abreast of advances in the global e-learning market whose value is forecast to reach $457bn by 2026. In addition, broadening the reach of both digital and traditional education offerings to underserved areas of the population is vital.

A long-term approach is thus important in implementing the reforms necessary to successfully align the sector with international standards. However, recent strides taken by the relevant authorities give reason for optimism. Likewise, while private investment has been forthcoming and further opportunities are in the pipeline, entities interested in entering the market will find more room for growth as the government works to liberalise and modernise education. However, with the authorities working to improve synergies between education and training providers, the labour market and the importance of that relationship to the development agenda, existing gaps equate to significant opportunities for investment.