Secondary school diplomas for sale

The quality of Saudi education system leaves much to be desired and the abuse of the system by greedy educators has also imperiled education.

For more than seven years people have been playing with the reputation of the Saudi education system. The greed of private school owners and school principals in rural areas has contributed to this abuse.

The avarice of these people knows no bounds. They have even begun marketing high school certificates to students from neighboring Gulf countries. Most of the students from these countries have either failed to obtain their high school certificate in their own countries or have not bothered to go the right route after finding the easy way.

Saudi education officials could easily root out this fraud. By examining records they would discover a large number of students from neighboring Gulf countries coming and obtaining fake diplomas. They should also look at the bigger problem that they have not yet discovered: Why would a student from the neighboring country who finished his earlier schooling in his own country come to Saudi Arabia to study high school?

Ironically this is not a secret. There are advertisements in free newspapers distributed in these countries that encourage students to earn high school diplomas in Saudi Arabia with little or no effort.

The Ministry of Education can contact the embassies in these countries to discover whether this is true or not.

These Gulf countries are now imposing safeguards by setting up new conditions that could bust this certificates racket.

Now students have to study not just the last year but all the three high school years in Saudi Arabia in order for their certificates to be recognized.

But the racketeers have already found a way to circumvent this. They have started posting ads in these countries once again saying their certificates will emphasize that the student had studied for three years in Saudi Arabia. They hope to enlist the help of private school owners and some corrupt school principals to provide these records.

The ads are being posted in the free sheets because official newspapers refuse to run such ads. They know it is fraud.

In order to stem the abuse of the Saudi education system, I urge the officials of the Education Ministry to constitute committees to study why this is happening and to hold those who are playing with the reputation of our education system responsible and punish them.