World Bank Praises Planned School Reports

Saudi Arabia’s Education and Training Evaluation Commission (ETEC) will begin to evaluate and accredit the Kingdom’s schools - in line with international best-practice, a decision lauded by The World Bank.

The WB said it had seen the plans which were in line with the country's ambitious 2030 growth plans in which it wants to transform its economy.

ETEC will evaluate and accredit schools and training institutions in both the public, private and international sectors. It will do so "systematically and consistently" to improve the effectiveness of schools, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education.

The report said that school evaluation and accreditation was an effective tool for "building high-quality education that supports the labor market, human capital development, economic growth and increased productivity".

The World Bank noted ETEC’s program would consist of two main stages of self- and external-evaluation.

Self-evaluation includes a set of internal processes and procedures carried out by public, private and international schools to evaluate their performance and verify their effectiveness and efficiency.

External evaluation includes a set of processes and procedures carried out by a specialized education team from outside the school that reviews and evaluates all aspects of performance and measures the quality of the outputs of the system.

ETEC has already established a digital platform to evaluate and accredit schools. It includes a comprehensive information system for managing the evaluation processes, and will be used to collect data on school performance used for inspection purposes.