Absenteeism to affect grades of students

The Ministry of Education has emphasized that directors of education departments across the country alert students and their parents to the importance of school attendance from the first day of school. The step is in line with the ministry’s efforts to avert student absenteeism at the beginning of the school year.
In order to ensure that schools witness full attendance from the beginning of the first day of the academic year, the ministry has directed the education departments to apply attendance and absence regulations to absentees who cannot come up with valid reasons.
It has further advised the departments to employ the text message services to raise awareness among parents and encourage their children to attend school regularly.
The directions come within the framework of a procedural plan to follow up students’ attendance since the first day of study until the end of the academic year.
Mohammad bin Abdull Almurshed, the acting director general of education for Riyadh region, stressed the need to communicate between education offices and school principals on the one hand and the parents of students on the other. He said parents should make their children aware of the importance of time and study from day one. He added that textbooks will be distributed to students early in the school week, and marks will be deducted for students absent without legitimate excuses.
Almurshed also called on headmasters to embark on serious study from day one. He said that a disciplinary committee will be formed to follow up on schools and evaluate them in terms of seriousness, quality and performance.
The acting general director for the Riyadh education department said that the textbooks have arrived and that schools should accept Saudi students only. He warned the principals of night schools against accepting non-Saudi students without the approval of the education department. According to the plan laid out by the Education Ministry, the percentage of absenteeism at public schools should not exceed 5 percent of the total number of students in the school.
The plan also stresses the importance of commitment and respect for the school day as one of the strategies for boosting the overall performance of schools.