Students at an Aramco education programme

SAUDI ARAMCO remains committed to supporting education programmes that focus on math, science and engineering – three critical areas for the company and the kingdom’s future.

In 2011, the company launched the Saudi Aramco Mathletics Initiative for the Ministry of Education.

Mathletics is an online educational tool that helps teachers and parents raise the math abilities of students from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Designed to improve standards and engagement in math, this four-year initiative will bring Mathletics to more than 350,000 students in schools across the kingdom. To facilitate accessibility and stimulate interest in alternative learning methods as part of the Mathletics Initiative, Saudi Aramco established a Math E-Portal website with an Arabic interface, based on Saudi Arabian math curricula.

Launched in September last, the programme trained 175 teachers in Jeddah, Dammam, Riyadh and Al Hasa and 185,000 accounts were reserved for students’ use.

Saudi Aramco has created a pilot programme to foster 30 Math and Science Clubs in 15 schools in the Eastern Province.

In 2011, it finalised the curriculum and materials and established four clubs in two intermediate schools in Dammam and Al Khobar. The remaining 26 clubs became active from February 2012.

In 2010, Saudi Aramco committed to a collaboration programme with Sultan bin Abdulaziz Science and Technology Centre (SciTech) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The project, called Blossoms, which stands for Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies, creates videos that engage students while teaching math and science and sharpening their critical-thinking skills.

A video library containing over 50 math and science lessons is freely available to teachers as streaming video, Internet downloads, DVDs and videotapes through MIT’s website.

In 2011, 200 teachers participated in Blossoms’ one-week course on how to use the videos in their classrooms.

Saudi Aramco has collaborated with the Institute of Electric and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to promote engineering education through workshops and hands-on engineering lessons in Arabic, in classrooms and online.

The Teacher In-Service Programme (TISP) aims to spread engineering education through train-the-trainer workshops for volunteers who in turn hold sessions for school teachers. In 2011, 350 teachers were trained and the curriculum has already been implemented in schools.

Saudi Aramco also lent its support to a student- targeted programme called Try Engineering, which is a web-based portal about engineering topics and engineering careers. The portal was developed to help young people understand what engineering means and its many applications. Saudi Aramco supported the design, translation and hosting of Try Engineering.

By the end of 2011, 95 per cent of the website material had been translated into Arabic.

Saudi Aramco completed the second year of its three-year renovation project to provide a major uplift to all 139 Saudi Aramco-built government schools and two Dhahran Ahliyyah Schools. Thirty-five schools were renovated in 2010, and another 35 were renovated in 2011. The company’s long-standing College Degree Programme for Non-employees gives Saudi students the opportunity to receive a college education in areas of study required by Saudi Aramco, with the intent of offering them employment upon graduation.

It currently sponsors 1,342 students who are majoring in engineering and business at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals and at a number of competitive out-of-kingdom universities.

Some of these students are graduates of Aramco’s College Preparatory Programme (CPP) and College Continuation Programme (CCP).

In 2011, a total of 1,728 students participated in the CPP, College Degree Programme for Nonemployees, and Associate Degree Programme for Non-employees.

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