Originally Posted by gypsy8522

A'isha,

As you already know, I am not from Saudi Arabia, and I have also never lived there. The only thing I can tell you come from personal experiences, like the private schools which I have attended my whole life. I can still kind of remember my weekly schedule from my final year, it was as follows: 7 hours math, 5 arabic (or french) I wanted to study French but my parents made me take arabic, 6 English (no other choice), 5 hours Chemistry, 5 Bio (other option was Physics), 3 Philosophy (or economics), 2 Physical Education (Art or Music), 1 Islamic Studies (or Religion).

There are two types of schools , government schools, and private or "language" schools. Most people living in the Gulf countries are well off and they can afford to put their kids in private schools. There are SO many different systems, French, German, Lebanese, American, Canadian, Indian and so on...the British system is the #1 i.e most common, however each school has there own rules, regulations, different books they use etc.. If people don't like a particular school, the easiest thing is to move on to another. I have personally been to 5 different schools, and I thank my parents for working hard in order that I don't go through government schools! I am pretty sure that private schools outnumber the public schools. Actually, one of my classmate's father was none other than the minister of education, LOL how embarrassing is that? Obviously he wasn't doing his job or he would have taken his own daughters to a government school. BTW, when I was in 4th grade, I had the honor of spending one whole day at a government school. My mom's friend was a teacher there, and her daughter who is also my friend, was a student. Some things I thought were strange, like the cafeteria selling chewing gum?!?! The English they taught, for my level, was So easy... when class was over I said that's it I moving to a government school LOL. And they had a school band, an entire orchestra that played the national anthem in the morning, afterwards they chanted the pledge "Our country blah blah" I was wondering the whole time if anyone ever felt out of place, since 90 percent of the students there were children of expatriats, so it wasn't exactly "their" country. I also didn't understand why the tables in the classrooms were so old and worn out when the government has so much money! With that said, you wouldn't believe how happy these people were, I also felt a kind of friendliness that I know I wouldn't have gotten had I visited one of the snobby private schools. Overall, I can't say that I liked it, but I enjoyed it because of the whole experience, except that I never got to ride the yellow bus. Oh, and did I mention they got out almost 3 hours earlier than us? Not fair.