Trouble ahead for CBSE Students in Saudi

By Javid Hassan

The decision of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to open tele-counselling facilities at 39 centres in India and four in the Gulf states (Kuwait, the UAE and Qatar) for students from February 1 to April 2 this year will cause a grave setback to CBSE schools in Saudi Arabia.

These help-lines for normal students and those with special needs was being provided to CBSE students to 39 schools in different parts of the country for the last 12 years. However, the Board decided to extend this service to four affiliated schools in the Gulf—one each in Kuwait, Dubai, Sharjah and Doha. Strangely enough, it did not include Saudi Arabia as part of this network, even though there are 20 CBSE-affiliated schools in that country. The decision will only compound the difficulties that international schools are facing in the Kingdom.

Under the new CBSE dispensation, some 43 principals, counsellors from CBSE schools, psychologists and social scientists will provide tele-counselling service on dedicated helplines in India and the Gulf to help the students cope with the examination stress. The facility will also be available for students with special needs from its website: www.cbse.nic.in.

One of the major problems facing CBSE-affiliated schools in Saudi Arabia is the lack of trained teachers, since Saudi visa regulations do not permit women to come on their own, except under the sponsorship of the school. This creates many hurdles for them, as they cannot move about without being escorted by their husbands.

Further, it creates a paradoxical situation for the couple if they are working under the sponsorship of two different organizations. The problem arises when the husband’s Iqama (residence permit) is not renewed by his sponsor. His wife will have then no option but to leave her job, as she cannot stay independent of her husband under the law. Such a situation has led to a demand for expatriate housewives, who may be degree-holders but not necessarily qualified for a teaching job. This factor, together with favouritism in the filling up of vacancies for teachers’ posts, has had an adverse impact on the standard of education in CBSE-affiliated schools in the Kingdom.

A case in point was the recent CBSE decision to include Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) for students of Classes X and XII for last year’s examination. The move evoked a mixed response both from the students and parents in the region.

The 2008 examination, based on the new curriculum, required the students to answer 20 percent of questions in the HOTS format to test the student’s skills in terms of his understanding the questions for relevant answers. Given the fact that a majority of them are used to “Most of the Same” (MOTS) type of standard answers, they were floored from the beginning. The question papers are set in such a way as would require them to answer all the questions within a specific time frame. Their academic deficiencies rendered them unfit for the revised format.

One of the students also drove home this point when he explained that schools in the region are not well equipped to provide interpretative skills among students due to the paucity of trained staff. Under these circumstances, only parents with adequate resources could opt for special tutorials for their children. Such an option is not available for a majority of parents belonging to the middle class families.

This has created a peculiar situation for CBSE schools, especially in Saudi Arabia, where most of the Indian schools have adopted the CBSE curriculum but lack qualified staff to handle key subjects at the higher levels due to the reasons cited above. The best course of action under these circumstances would have been to set up a tele-counselling centre also in the Kingdom. However, by keeping Saudi Arabia out of the loop, CBSE has already made a bad situation worse, as NRI students from Hyderabad and other states will find it difficult to survive in the tough competition looming ahead.