LONDON: A group of parents in Great Britain has hired a firm of lawyers in Riyadh to take legal action against their children's Saudi secondary school in London over examination failure rates of 96 percent. The Saudi parents told Al-Hayat Arabic daily that their children sat an “extremely difficult” examination set by a Saudi school in Paris and written in “unclear handwriting”. They said that invigilators drafted in from Paris refused examinee requests to read out illegible questions. One unnamed parent told the newspaper that the case against the Saudi Ministry of Education, which has been put before the Board of Grievances, cites “a breach of (Saudi) Cabinet law” which requires supervision by Saudi Students Clubs under the authority of the Ministry of Education and that pupils follow the Saudi curriculum. The claim states that this year a new system was followed by which “the schools were converted into educational centers teaching only Arabic and Islamic subjects”. A recent meeting in the UK between Fahd Al-Muhaizi', Director General of Examinations, and parents reportedly saw heated exchanges and led to Al-Muhaizi' calling the meeting to an abrupt end. The examinations head reportedly failed to placate parents by telling them that he would “look into” the 96-percent failure rate, but said that the ministry would remove the Paris Saudi school's authority to set examination questions and have a school in Saudi Arabia set and mark them instead. He said that Saudi schools in Great Britain were not authorized to set examination papers because they are officially “educational centers”. Al-Muhaizi' said he had sent a Ministry of Education representative to look at issues concerning Saudi schools in Britain and that the official had visited schools in Cardiff, Birmingham and, on the final day of the school year last Monday, a school in London. The changing of the UK Saudi schools' status to “educational centers” toward the beginning of the academic year was reportedly a cause of parent and pupil ire at the time, exacerbated by its introduction six weeks into the school term.
