RIYADH, 11 December 2002 — The Ministry of Education has awarded a major networking contract to the Dubai-based SMC Networks Middle East Co. to link 15,000 personal computers and 3,000 notebooks used by over 18,000 students in Saudi Arabia.
The agreement signals the ministry’s move to promote IT education at school-level and provide extensive Internet access to students.
Salih H. Al-Uwaishiq, project manager at the Ministry of Education, said that "after the technical evaluation of system integrators and assessment of the companies’ financial strength along with technical evaluation of the product itself, it was very easy for us to decide in favor of SMC as it had the best price compared to other companies.
SMC as a product was not new for the ministry as we have been using it."
The move to set up a huge school network will help thousands of students to access information not available in their text books and not taught in the classroom. "In fact, schools today are being placed under increasing pressure to provide students with advanced solutions including extensive Internet access, which is why the Ministry of Education has signed this contract", said Jamshed Mehdi, SMC’s managing director here.
The ministry will have to further expand the network in due course keeping in view the fact that the number of schools and students are consistently growing. The total number of schools in the Kingdom was 12,621 last year with more than 98,015 classrooms. The number of students was put at 2,228,397 and the number of teachers crossed the 161,000-mark.
Referring to the benefits of such IT projects like the one awarded to SMC, Al-Uwaishiq said that the Ministry of Education is keen to develop services for students. The ministry has also been working continuously to expand educational infrastructure. An SR1.3 billion plan to build hundreds of new schools is currently under way.
Last year, 400 new schools were built by the Ministry of Education. This is in addition to 510 Qu’ran memorization schools, which have a cumulative enrollment of over 52,000 students and 4,600 teachers.
The ministry has also established some 150 health units to look after the health of students.
The ministry also pays great attention to adult education and illiteracy eradication programs. These programs have led to the opening of a number of special schools and adult education centers across the Kingdom.
The number of schools to combat illiteracy and promote adult education totaled 1,107 with 2,152 classrooms last year. More than 33,500 adult students were on the school rolls.
Saudi Arabia spent more than SR153 billion on education during the fifth Five Year Plan alone.
