A considerable number of school students preferred to start their nine-day mid-term vacation, which effectively begins today, one day earlier by simply not going to school on Wednesday. With very few students showing up at school on Wednesday, many teachers also decided to leave a few hours early, despite specific instructions not to do so. Some teachers thought they should use the extra time to go to other government facilities to take care of official work. Others just went home. Also, some secondary schools were completely deserted on Wednesday. According to Rajallah Al-Sulami, spokesman for the General Directorate of Education in Jeddah, social factors seem to be behind the phenomenon, which appears to repeat itself at every holiday season. “This annoying phenomenon occurs not only in schools, but also in most working places,” Sulami told the Saudi Gazette. He said that he did not have any statistics on absenteeism, since reports from the field should go through supervision centers before they can receive them at the directorate. Hussein Al-Malki, principal of Prince Saud Bin Abdul-Muhsin Elementary School in Jeddah, said that some 77 percent of their 829 students were reported absent on Wednesday. He blamed students' parents for letting their children get away with not attending schools on the last school day before the holiday. “Absenteeism among students in intermediate and secondary levels highly affects the attendance at elementary schools,” he told the Saudi Gazette. He added that when intermediate and secondary students fail to show up for school, the younger, impressionable students tend to follow suit. “In fact, we have sent letters to parents to urge them to send their children to schools on the final day of school, but unfortunately few families responded.” Malki also blamed some teachers for giving false impressions on the importance of the final days. “It's quite true that there are some teachers who give confidence to students who plan to skip school (on the final days before the holiday,)” said Malki. “In case a teacher is found guilty of doing so, or when a parent proves that a teacher has told his students not to attend school, the teacher will be held responsible for that.” Malki added that unless parents cooperate with schools, the phenomenon will continue. Waleed Namnaqani, principal of the Jeddah Secondary School, agreed with Sulami on that the behavior is a matter of social trend. “No student showed up on Wednesday, so we canceled classes,” Namnaqani said. “With that situation, we couldn't even force teachers to stay at the school. Students are the axis of the educational process and when there are no students, teachers are useless.” Some students who were seen hanging out at Jeddah's waterfront from early morning Wednesday said that many factors pushed them to skip school. “The weather over the last two days has been amazing,” said Salem Al-Harthi, a student, adding that he did not want to miss the opportunity to enjoy it. Harthi supported what Malki, the school principal, had said, and claimed that his teachers have stopped giving lessons. “The last lesson we took was on Monday,” said Harthi. “It seemed to us that our teachers didn't want us to come to school anymore.” __
