Aramco Expats

Evolution of Saudi Aramco Schools

1. Pipeline
2. In Search Of Oil
3. Other - In Search Of Oil

Author: Dick and Ruth Maise
Released 27 May 2007

If you or your children attended any of the Saudi Aramco schools operated for the children of eligible expatriates, you have experienced a constantly evolving, quality education system that strives to meet and even surpass the education system on which it is based. 

Saudi Aramco schools follow an American-style curriculum designed to develop children intellectually, creatively, emotionally, socially and physically, and when compared to their state-side counterparts, Saudi Aramco educated children generally rank in the top 10 percent.

Dhahran Fair (November 1981)

Originally an American owned company, Saudi Aramco mostly employed individuals on foreign assignment from North America.  When family housing became available, the spouses and children of expatriates began arriving and setting up home, turning work camps into small communities.  Small schools were organized, and often teachers were recruited from among the spouses with training in education.  As the communities grew, and the number of children in need of education grew, a formal school system was developed.  Now Saudi Aramco offers state-of-the-art schools in the four main expatriate communities, Abqaiq School , Dhahran Hills School, Dhahran School, Ras Tanura School, and Udhailiyah School, and recruits outstanding teachers and administrators from among the expatriate community and abroad.

The schools operate on a trimester system. Each three-month school session is followed by a four-to six-week break, during which a wide variety of enrichment programs and special tutoring sessions are offered.  School is offered to children up through grade nine.  After students complete the ninth grade, they may attend one of many excellent accredited schools throughout the world. Since the company pays a substantial portion of high school costs, families may be able to send their children to a much finer school than they might ordinarily attend. And, for children attending college, Saudi Aramco will pay for some visits to Saudi Arabia.

Extracurricular activities include all kinds of sports, as well as music and drama productions. Many people are surprised at the extensive athletic facilities available for the kids -- often more than you would find in the schools back home. Every school has a well-equipped, air-conditioned gymnasium. Outside, there are full-size athletic fields, and students can use community swimming pools and tennis courts.

In the following excerpts from letters written to family beginning in 1958, Dick and Ruth Maise provide an interesting and often entertaining look back on the evolution of schools and the education system in Aramco camps. Both their children, Charlene and Eddie, attended Saudi Aramco schools.

June 23, 1959 School Kids are Back - Dick: “The college and high school kids are back here for the summer now. The company flies all the kids back and forth once a year on the company planes, so they can spend their vacations here. They can work for the company, too, if they want to, while they are here.”

December 2, 1959 Life in Dhahran - Ruth: “The population of Dhahran is about 3,000, I think. That’s just the Senior Staff camp; does not include the Intermediate and General camps.  Each Aramco town--Dhahran, Abqaiq, and Ras Tanura--has a school which has grades 1- 9. I don’t know the enrollment but believe there are three classes each through the 4th grade and two each of the 5th and 6th grades. (That’s Dhahran; the other districts are much smaller.) Grades 7, 8 and 9 are set up like any junior high--a different teacher for each subject."

May 8, 1968 Shortage of Teachers - Ruth: “The Principal of the Dhahran School wants me to teach Jr. High English for 12 days in July. I finally told him I would accept if I am absolutely the last resort. He said he would try further to get someone else. But I have the feeling that I was already the last resort. A friend has said she would take Charlene in the mornings. The school is really desperate for teachers. Every year they hire 2 more teachers than classes to be ‘floating’ teachers but something always happens; someone leaves or gets sick. Every year there is a teacher shortage about this time."

September 27, 1968 School - Ruth: “Last year the school experimented with the first grades by dividing each class into two sections; one section went to school at 8:40 a.m.; the second went one hour later. Then the first section left an hour early in the afternoon. That way the teacher had a whole hour with each section for reading. They are continuing that schedule this year. Charlene is in the later class which means she goes to school at 9:40 a.m. Since she gets up by 6:00 a.m., she’s almost worn out by the time she gets there. And the first thing she has is gym! Her reading is the last period of the day.”

December 21, 1968 Note to a Young Student - Dick: “If you and your sister were going to school here with Charlene, your schedule would be different than it is there in New York. Charlene goes to school for September, October, and November, then has all of December off, goes back to school for January, February and March, then has April off, and goes to school again in May, June and July with August off. How would you like a schedule like that? It’s what we call the ‘trimester’ system."

November 5, 1969 Music and Art - Ruth: "Charlene has music (mostly singing) twice a week and art once a week at school. The music teacher is excellent."

September 28, 1970 New School Methods - Dick : "The school is in turmoil due to the new superintendent splitting the school up into three sections, and a raft of new teachers as well as experimenting with new methods.  The town is also full of controversy over the new set-up. Anyway, it makes for lively discussions at parties."

August 3, 1971 School Out - Dick: "School is out now for the month of August. Charlene is taking some tutoring in the mornings this month to catch up on some things she didn’t get done before school let out because of having missed some while we were on vacation. This is a regular thing here, what with people coming and going all the time, so a good percentage of the kids take some tutoring during the off months."

August 30, 1971 School to be Radically Different - Dick: "The school is going to be radically different this year than before. They have adopted a system of planned, individualized instruction using all sorts of visual aids and computer-programmed schedules and learning units, and in addition, have started a system of team teaching. Instead of individual classrooms of 20 to 30 students, they have knocked out a lot of the room walls and made large learning areas with about 80 or so students and 4 or 5 teachers all working together with the kids. And these are also ‘non-graded’ in that there are kids from at least three traditional grade levels in each group. This is the latest and most modern concept in teaching and learning, and we have high hopes that it will work out here. It is taking college level learning concepts and methods and applying them to the grade school level, with the help of computers to keep track of where each child is in the program, how much work he has completed, and so forth. It has been a real innovation in this basically conservative community, as you can well imagine."

January 26, 1973 Life in Aramco - Dick: "The school system here is presently controversial. It is, of course, a company-run school; all the teachers and administrators are Aramco employees, like the rest of us. It is good, but somewhat different than your children are probably used to. They presently have team teaching and open space concepts, without much in the way of ‘traditional’ classrooms. We personally feel it is a good system and the children are getting educated with a considerable amount of personal choice in what they study, within a larger framework of possible assignments. The feeling is divided within the community, with avid supporters on both sides. It has been controversial for about three years. Some people have been so strongly against the present set-up that they have taken their kids out of the system and sent them elsewhere outside the country to school. But these are a very few of the most conservative people in camp; most of the kids themselves seem to like the system, probably because of the degree of freedom it allows them. They make use of audio-visual aids, movies, tapes, film strips, and other devices. There are around 1,000 kids in the school, I think, with about a 12 or 15 to-one ratio to teachers. About 15 to 25 percent of the kids are non-American, including some Saudi kids, some Indian and Pakistani, and numerous other Arab nationalities such as Jordanian, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian, reflecting the general makeup of the Aramco work force. I have a girl 10, in the fifth grade, and a boy 3, not in the system yet. By the way, the school goes only through the 9th grade; after that, the kids go outside the country somewhere to boarding school and the company has an educational assistance plan that pays most of the cost for the next three grades to complete the kids education."

June 15, 1973 Swimming Program - Ruth: “The last six weeks the school has been running a swimming program for all the students. One of the first grade teachers told me that every child has improved markedly in classroom work since the swimming program. Studies have shown recently that swimming has a direct relationship to improved reading. Isn’t that interesting? The regular swimming program is finished now but the school is starting another class next week for those students who have learning problems. The swimming program was not set up to help with learning; they’ve just discovered that that’s a happy co-incidence!”

July 22, 1973 School Politics - Ruth: “I got behind on my schedule because of school politics. Some candidates wanted to completely do away with team teaching. Just before the vote for school board of education member, the ‘opposition candidate’ sent out a letter just to the Dhahran Arabs, promising them a very strong Arabic program which would prepare their children to go to Middle Eastern schools. This would have been okay if aimed at Arab Christians, but government policy (at least in theory) is that this school is only for Americans and no Muslim children shall go to a school which does not teach the Koran. Company policy follows this; management told the candidates last year not to promise the Arabs something the company cannot fulfill."

“The outcome of it all is that next year’s plan is a compromise one with about 50 percent of the children in team teaching and the rest in self contained classrooms with 1 teacher. All we were asking for was some options for teachers and parents and we got that. But it took time!"

December 15, 1973 Tennis Pro - Ruth: “The school has hired a tennis pro to give group lessons. He’s in town anyway for the tennis association.”

September 25, 1974 New Teacher for Gifted Children - Ruth: “They have a new teacher who is going to have a special class for gifted children and Charlene will be in it. The teacher had a meeting the other night to explain the program to parents. It sounds like it will be very exciting and I know Charlene will love the teacher. Also the new gym teacher for young children specializes in creative movement (which includes dance) and she will be teaching a class after school for 5 year olds. I’m going to enroll Eddie for I’m convinced he has special talent in rhythm and music.”

December 10, 1974 AA - Ruth: “Charlene has loved her special class. It’s called the AA’s (for Academically Able which is what the school calls it.) The kids call it AA for Alcoholics Anonymous! They wrote, produced and directed an original play which they presented the last day of school. It was very cute. Today and tomorrow the class is touring the oil facilities in Abqaiq and Ras Tanura."

February 20, 1976 Boarding School Reps - Dick: "These boarding schools send representatives over here to talk with parents and kids and show and tell what their schools are like. I guess there are about 20 or 25 schools that send representatives out here during the course of the year."

December 4, 1976 Camp Out - Dick: “About 2 weeks ago the 7th graders from the Dhahran school spent a couple nights camping out just south of town. It was sort of an ‘outward bound’ type thing, to study the surroundings as well as have the camping-out experience. The teachers who ran it asked several people to come out and lecture to the kids about various things, and they asked me to talk about the local geology. I put together a little talk and rock display about the Dammam Dome and the oil field, and gave it one afternoon as part of their lecture programs. The kids were really attentive and asked lots of questions afterward. I got a kick out of doing it."

December 14, 1976 Notes about Eddie in School - Ruth: “This month I only worked half a day as Eddie was out of school. But as it turned out, he was at school most of the afternoon, anyway, with enrichment activities. And he loves to hang around school to play with all the other kids hanging around! It’s amazing how the kids don’t want to go home. That must say something about our school."

November 11, 1977 School - Ruth: By this time next year the 4 Aramco school districts (Dhahran, Ras Tanura, Abqaiq, and a new one--’Udhailiyah) will have a total of 2,500 kids!"

December 10, 1977 Activities for Eddie - Ruth: "Eddie is having a great time at school during the intersession which started December 3. He’s taking an art class and a special science class called ‘Operation Egg Drop,’ in that they are learning about gravity, etc. They are designing egg containers and when they get them built, they will drop them from the roof of the school building. Then they will redesign any which didn’t keep the egg from breaking. The second ‘egg drop’ will be from a helicopter a mile high!"

February 10, 1978 Home Visits - Ruth: "The company decided recently it will pay for 3 trips a year for our children who are away in high school."

June 9, 1978 No Jobs for Students - Dick: "There aren’t very many jobs for the high school students this year and not too many for the college kids either. The Company is having to hire quite a large proportion of the Saudi University students, so this cuts down on the numbers of the returning students they can hire. The kids are coming in pretty regularly now and I think that about half are here."

March 25, 1980 Pan Am Flights - Dick: "I think that we wrote that Charlene got here okay on the 16th. The spring vacations for the schools all seem to be different this year, so there have been kids coming and going for about a month already. It’s nice to have Pan Am coming in every day now direct from New York and going back the same night. It never seems to be full so there is room to stretch out. When she came in this time there were about 108 people on board, which is less than half full."

July 25, 1980 Last Day of School for Eddie - Ruth: "This has been an exciting week for Eddie. Wednesday was the last day of school. Starting the Wednesday before, the junior high kids ‘initiated’ all the sixth graders whenever they could catch them. This meant anything from dousing them with shaving cream to raw eggs. Eddie got both at least twice. He was pretty upset, but would have been tremendously disappointed if he hadn’t been caught!"

“Sunday night there was an open house at Jr. High for all sixth graders and parents. We visited each teacher and classroom which he will have in September....Besides the usual basics (math, social studies, science, and language arts), he’s taking home economics the first trimester, industrial arts the second trimester, and children’s theater the third trimester. He also has chorus alternating with P.E. He’ll be in the 8th grade math class and 7th grade for everything else. I don’t know what the language arts teacher will do about his reading; his group has already finished the 7th grade book. She did say she gives extra credit for each book read and reported. He should pile up lots of credit. Which he will probably need to make up for homework not done!

December 7, 1980 Christmas - Ruth: “School ended on November 26 until January 4. Eddie signed up for a few intersession activities--a computer class, independent recreation (that just means going to the gym and doing whatever you feel like with the sports and gym equipment there), and once a week a class in disco dancing. Can you believe it?!"

January 16, 1981 New Youth Center - Ruth: "Eddie is enjoying the new, beautiful youth center. It’s very nice living ‘downtown’ which is within 4 blocks of the school and youth center and 1.5 blocks from the snack bar and meeting hall where we square dance and attend assorted slide shows. I don’t worry at all about Eddie coming home at 11:00 p.m. by himself."