Saudi Gazette report TAIF — A total of 260 private schools are facing severe financial crises and are threatened with permanent closure, a senior chamber official said. The schools had borrowed SR500 million from the Saudi Credit Bank to improve their facilities. With the increased outlay for salaries following a government decision to raise teachers' wages, the schools are currently not in position to pay back their loans. Chairman of the National Committee for Private Education at the Council of the Saudi Chambers Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Haqbani expects an additional 180 private schools to face a similar fate before the end of the current academic year. There are 3,585 private schools in the Kingdom. Al-Haqbani said the schools, which include kindergartens and primary schools, took the loans before the government order to raise the salaries of teachers to SR5,600 was issued. Al-Haqbani said the school owners are now struggling to pay the monthly salaries and insist that they cannot pay back their debts. “These schools are threatened with final closure because of their inability to pay back their debts,” he said. Al-Haqbani said the closing down of the private schools was not unexpected since the majority of them would not be able to cope with the increased salaries of Saudi teachers. He said the General Organization of Social Security (GOSI) has made the situation worse by insisting that the monthly insurance payments should be based on the basic salary of SR5,000, and not on SR1,500 fixed by the Labor Ministry earlier. Asked about the impact of 440 private schools closing down, Al-Haqbani said this would have adverse consequences for the national economy and would obstruct the progress of the national strategy of employment. “The private schools contribute about SR11.55 billion to the national economy annually. We will also lose more than 4,000 jobs currently being provided by the private schools,” he said. Al-Haqbani, however, made it clear that he was not against raising the salaries of Saudi teachers in private schools. “We have actually proposed to fix a basic salary of SR6,000, to be equally shared by the school, Hadaf and the Ministry of Finance,” he recalled. According to informed sources, the Ministry of Education has asked the directorates of education all over the Kingdom to meet with the owners of private schools to find a solution to the problem.
