Diaa Bugis, Chief Editor
Ahmed, Fahad, Noufal, & Thamer; Contributing Editors
This morning I came earlier than previous days, that is because I am responsible for writing the review on Session 5. I am so enthusiastic about this session which talks about “The Socio-economic Link: The Double Helix of Life”.
John Defterios (an anchor for CNN), began with the greetings and explaining what will go on in the session and the importance of labor and human capital. John said that economic development should go through education and training. After that Johen introduced the first speaker which is Sheikha Lubna.
Sheikha Lubna, UAE Minister of Labor, talked about how the UAE is taking the social economic development issues more seriously and establishing a long-term strategy to enhance the educational system. Also, Lubna focused on the training and development of human capital.
Next speaker was HRH Prince Bandar Bin Khaled, Al-Faisal University, taking about his 10 years experience with the King Faisal Foundation. He began with an introduction of community King Faisal and what they accomplished. Some of the projects they have worked on are the King Faisal Model Village (Al-Habala), the King Faisal Scholarship, the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic study, Effat College and so on…
HRH Prince Bandar believes in a guarantee to provide education for all classes of society leads to a fulfillment of the goal of investing in human capital.
Also, he said "we have no problem at all with importing employees from abroad, but at the same time we want to qualify and develop Saudi citizen to work in the new seven economic cities".
Finally, he said “human creativity is the unlimited economic resource” and “education is the agent of change toward human development”
After a short tea break, we came back with the discussion panel featuring Mr.Andreas Schleider, Dr. Mona Mourshed, Dr. Blair Sheppard, Dr. Ghazi Bin Zager, and Dr. Haifa Jamelallil.
They discussed the issue of “Learning: How to Develop Human Capital”. Some of the topics covered were how our educational system can make a different from others, how an individual can make a big difference, and changing the environment to become a better place.
I noticed in this discussion that they all agreed that "change" can make a difference.
"Teachers" (better qualified, educated, and trained) are one of the key factors that have to be changed in order to advance education.
After the panel, Dr. Ghazi Al-Gosaibi, Saudi Minister of Labor, came to speak to us.
Frankly, I would not have expected this man to be in a position of a Minister (government official), because he joked and laughed with us and a smile never left his face (I always thought a Minister had to be serious all the time).
Dr. Ghazi talked about the importance of training. He said that most successful training programs derive from the partnership between the government sector and the private sector.
Dr. Ghazi also, mentioned that training in KSA started very late in 1970s, at which time there were only 100 students studying in technical schools. However, currently there are 95,000 students in theses schools, and the target goal of Dr. Ghazi before he retires is to have 1,000,000 trainees in these training schools.
Finally, Dr. Ghazi surprised the crowd by honoring the physically and mentally challenged and providing jobs for them.
Unfortunately, I did not see Dr. Khaled Al-Ankari the Saudi Minister of Higher Education because I prepared a question for him. Anyhow, in my opinion there are some problems in our educational system in KSA.
The emphasis in education for me is how come now that we are in the WTO there are students from some universities (with a focus on business administration) that have no linguistic skills. These are skills vital to communicating and interacting with the external world. Although I did not hear a reply to this in Dr. Khaled address but I would like to know what are the plans of The Ministry of Higher Educational to improve and develop the educational level in KSA? As I wrote above that I was unlucky I couldn't ask him, I though better luck next time!!!!! However, maybe I will be lucky and he will read my BLOG and post a comment.
Last but not least, chickens are jumping in my stomach, I'm feeling very hungry and I am going to fill my tummy. So, wait for the next session. Till then bye and t.c…cya…
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