Secretariat General of the Higher Education Council

Ministry of Education participates in a virtual workshop entitled “Education during the Corona pandemic”

12-Aug-2020

Ministry of education participated in a virtual workshop, entitled “Education during the Corona pandemic” which was organized by the GCC General Secretariat, in which officials and specialists in the GCC states ministries of education and ministries of higher education participated, in addition to experts in the field Education.

The workshop discussed the current experiences of education ministries in dealing with the effects of the precautionary measures imposed by member states, the procedures and measures related to education at the next academic year, and future directions for organizing and adopting distance education.

Dr. Abdulghani Al-Showaikh, Secretary-General of the Higher Education Council, highlighted the Kingdom’s effort to ensure the continuity of higher education, by providing remote learning services to higher education institute and mandating precautionary measures that ensured the continuous operation and academic research output of these institutes. In addition to measures to support overseas students and planning for the upcoming academic year. Dr. Showaikh highlighted that these efforts resulted in active remote and electronic education participation rates ranging between 80% to 100%.

Dr. Al-Showaikh also demonstrated future plans, that includes utilization of remote education, along with various recommendations to develop higher education academic systems that employs creative curriculums and varying educational approaches.

Mrs. Latifa Al-Bunodha, undersecretary for general and technical education, presented a full overview of the Ministry of Education’s experience in dealing with these unprecedented circumstances, in full alignment with official government guidelines. As his excellency the Minister issued various directives to ensure the continuity of educational activities, with standardized mechanisms and guidelines. Those included the migration to electronic remote learning platform, enablement of available educational systems, launch of new assessment mechanism and the introduction of virtual classrooms, televised classes and full utilization of the educational gateway. On top efforts to streamline curriculum to focus on core topics and learning outcomes.

Mrs. Al-Bunodha also highlighted the ministry’s future plans in electronic learning, safe students return and the available options available for the next educational year. Including the plans to start the new year and the efforts taken to further develop available platforms, systems and services and invest in human resources to fully utilize them.