Thousands of schools have not received new English curriculum for new semester

Two weeks since the beginning of the academic year and the Ministry of Education has still not provided 2,000 schools with the newly developed English language curricula’s textbooks. Those schools are currently teaching with the old curriculum.
Teachers told an Arabic newspaper that the delay would affect the purpose of the new curriculum, saying the old curriculum was being taught to avoid wasting time. The pupils, however, would not benefit from current classes (taught using old textbooks) because the new curriculum was very different than the old one. 
“Not receiving the new textbooks has put teachers in a predicament, as they don’t know how to evaluate the students and how to implement the curriculum schedule,” said teacher Mohammad Al-Otaibi. He said more delays would pose “a real pressure” implementing the curriculum as planned and finishing it on time. 
Bassam Al-Maimouni, a teacher, said he fears the delay would affect the efforts and plans the ministry had put in place to make the development in teaching English a success. “The Ministry of Education developed the curriculum to cope with the developments made in education in general. Most teachers underwent training courses on the new curriculum,” he said. 
Ministry spokesman Mohammad Al-Dukhaini said the reason for the delay was administrative. The unreceived curriculum was still under review and would be delivered to schools by the beginning of next week.
As of now, 15,000 schools around the country have their newly developed textbooks, he added.