School owners struggle to recruit foreign teachers

DAMMAM: Female owners of private schools in the Eastern Province described the procedures for obtaining visas for teachers as prohibitive, and have requested the Ministry of Labor to address the issue.
The school owners aired their concerns at a recent meeting with officials of the General Directorate of Education in the Eastern Province.
More than 50 women who own schools in the region discussed the rights of employees in private educational institutions, pointing specifically to the difficulty in obtaining visas for non-teaching positions through the electronic service portals available on the ministry’s website.
They suggested linking procedures electronically between the Ministries of Labor and Education to reduce timeframes and ease the process for certain requests. They also highlighted the difficulty in obtaining visas for bringing teachers from abroad, despite a good rate of Saudization.
“Our request was rejected by the labor office, but we are trying to bring in qualified English teachers from abroad and improve the quality of teaching for the benefit of students,” said a school owner.
Some owners expressed their views on the difficulty in obtaining approvals for school activities, as well as the lack of training courses by the Ministry of Education for private school teachers. Businesswomen interested in investing in the education sector complained about the prohibitive terms with regard to licensing and selecting buildings.
Dalal Al-Qarni, assistant director of Labor Office in the Eastern Province, said the office organized the meeting with the aim of “informing female owners of private schools about the electronic services provided by the ministry and how they can be best utilized to facilitate processes such as obtaining necessary licenses.”
She said the meeting was one in a series hosted by the office for private sector employers to discuss the difficulties and obstacles they face and means of addressing them.
Alaa Al-Medlej and Ghada Al-Majid from the Labor Office informed the participants about the available e-services and provided an explanation about the ministry’s site and portals, while Azhar Al-Qassab and Nahed Al-Abbas spoke about the inspection mechanism.