JEDDAH — A quarter of teachers of both genders in the Kingdom regret joining the teaching profession, a recent report issued by the Education and Training Evaluation Commission said. The report also revealed the low rate of training and educational development for school leaders in the Kingdom, Al-Watan Arabic daily said on Tuesday. About 12.2 percent of school leaders, compared to 29.7 percent in TALIS, received formal training before being assigned to work for school administration, while 38.8 percent of leaders emphasized their dire need for professional development compared to 24 percent of their counterparts in other countries. Meanwhile, 27.5 percent of male teachers and 24.5 percent of female teachers expressed regret about choosing the teaching profession. The percentages are relatively high when compared to 11.2 percent of male teachers and 9.9 percent of female teachers in TALIS. According to the report titled "The Teaching Profession and its Value in the View of Teachers and School Leaders," whose data are included in the Kingdom's participation in the International Education and Learning Survey (TALIS 2018), which was recently analyzed and prepared by the General Administration for Research and Innovation in the Education and Training Evaluation Commission, in cooperation with the National Center for Measurement and in coordination with The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the average experience of teachers in the Kingdom is (12.3 years) less than TALIS (16.2 years) by four years. According to the report, the percentage of teaching hours for female teachers has increased in the Kingdom, and the average weekly teaching hours for male teachers in Saudi Arabia has decreased to (19.6), by a slight difference from the average for female teachers (21.7). TALIS is not much different, as male teachers teach for 20 hours and female teachers for 20.3 hours. The report highlighted a relative decrease in the participation of teachers and students in the decision-making process, as 92.8 percent of school leaders in the Kingdom see that their institutions provide their teachers with opportunities to actively participate in decision-making, compared to 97.7 percent of the leaders in TALIS. Meanwhile, 78.5 percent of the leaders see that their schools provide opportunities to parents to actively participate in school decisions compared to 83 percent in TALIS, while 77.2 percent of leaders see that their schools provide students with decision-making opportunities, compared to 80.7 percent of leaders in TALIS.
