Filipino schools in Saudi Arabia have been advised to follow the rules of the Saudi Ministry of Education (MoE) and the local governments where they operate in order to avoid being closed or penalized by the authorities. Estrella A. Babano, education attaché of the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, who assumed her post in March this year, made this appeal during the four-day conference of all GCC-based Philippine schools currently being held on Panglao Island in Bohol, Philippines. Babano is one of the resource persons at the conference. Around 200 delegates from Filipino schools operating from the six Gulf states are currently attending the conference, which started May 18 and was organized by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) with the cooperation of the Philippine Departments of Education, Foreign Affairs, Labor and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. “You have to abide by the rules on how foreign schools are governed and managed in the Kingdom if you want to continue your operation in Saudi Arabia,” Babano told principals, administrators and representatives of some 30 Saudi-based Filipino schools attending the conference. She held an exclusive dialogue with Filipino school officials during the conference to hear their problems. During the dialogue, Filipino school representatives informed Babano of the closure of a number of schools in Riyadh and Jeddah without prior notice from the Department of Foreign Education, Ministry of Education. The education attaché said Filipino schools in Saudi Arabia must establish unified quality standards in education that conform to the requirements of the MoE and municipal governments. She cited, as an example, the prohibition of the MoE that schools should not operate in rented villas due to a number of issues, such as safety, as well as the illegal operation of nursery schools in flats. According to Babano the safeguards – and guarantees – for Filipino schools to continue their existence in the Kingdom are for them to learn to co-exist with Islamic values (for example teaching Arabic language) because the classroom is now part of the borderless world; to interact positively with local communities; to upgrade educational processes because Filipino schools do not have a monopoly on knowledge; to constantly improve and train their human resources and to advance and develop the Philippine educational system, particularly the curricula, to the target 2020 period.
