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New Central System for High Schools Exams
Ministry of Educatiom
Saudi Arabia

The Problem

1. Since starting high school, as a part of general education, in Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of Education - MOE awarded its high school graduates a certificate of graduation at this stage upon the completion of high school requirements and tests. The tests for 33000 schools of all the 12th grade were prepared centrally (by the General Department of Exams at MOE). The answer papers were collected and graded in 25 different centers. The results are then entered in these 25 centers and certificates were printed and distributed to all secondary schools students.
2.
In 2007-2008 a major change of decentralization was introduced where each school became responsible of preparing and grading the tests of its students and entering the results in the exam system which was installed in each school. The installation of the system introduced the many challenges like The exam rules are dynamic requiring the system to be updated to reflect changes in the rules. Such updates to the system may not be installed in all schools. This result in many versions of the system to be available in all schools.
Moreover the Collecting the exam results in order to generate statistics and provide results to universities electronically was very difficult due to the system nature which allowed schools to enter the subject code and due to different versions available at schools.
At the end we found that Installing the system and upgrading it to more than 4800 schools were major tasks.

Solution and Key Benefits

 What is the initiative about? (the solution)
We could say that with this new initiative the Students Results became fair and accurate to all high secondary schools students because same and regulations and rules are applied to all of them. At the same time we succeed to Save time and effort from one side and Decreasing the cost from another side .
On the other hand the Announcing of the final results become in one week instead of three weeks in the old system.
Another benefit for this new exam system is Helping all local universities in facilitating the acceptance of the students and reducing the time and efforts in accepting them from seven minutes to less than one minute per student.
Of course this new system gave us a high level of Increasing the security of data and information.

Actors and Stakeholders

 Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
There was a need to provide a centralized system for monitoring and auditing and controlling the high secondary schools exams., in particular, after the cancellation of the old exams system to provide a centralized system overcomes weaknesses and shortcomings of the System. From here, IT Department in the Ministry began the draft rules and design of the Central Exams. For High Secondary School, Its main objectives is to fix the Regulations and rules of tests are applied in all cases automatically and unified. At this stage the quality and accuracy of data monitoring become very high.
The stakeholders of the imitative are many: such as the students , the teachers , the schools directories and the ministry administration .
From the other side there are other group of stakeholders consist of local universities and all colleges (civil & military colleges)

(a) Strategies

 Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
 a.      What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
3. There were different steps followed to implement the New Central System for High Schools Exams. These steps are starting by Providing all high schools with internet connection, then establishing required hardware in the data center to admit the huge data and big volume of users (about 5000 schools, 400,000 students). During the usage of the system, the database servers utilization did not exceed 40%.
4. At the next step we start Re-designing the internal network for the hardware to assure more security and safety
5. To avoid any Loss or damage of data we do Keeping frequent full back ups and continuous delta backups then Establishing Disaster Recovery Center to be used in emergency cases.
6. On the other side the process of Training become very important so we start Training more than 11000 school staff in all 4802 schools to use the system and then Establishing a sophisticated 3 level help desk.

(b) Implementation

 b.      What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
In 2008 we start standardization process of grading to teachers then In 2009 we start encourage high secondary school to utilize the technology . By the year of 2010 we Lunched the New Central System for High Schools Exams

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

 c.      What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The huge number of schools which is around 33000 schools and more than 5 million students all over the Saudi Arabia become the obstacles, on the other hand it was difficult to provide the training requirement for all the stakeholders (teachers) in a very limited time .

(d) Use of Resources

 d.      What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
The main recourses used for this initiate is training the concerned stakeholders. Then Development process stared by IT department and the comes the role of supervision given by Exam department . of course the IT department provide and maintain support from the IT department.

Sustainability and Transferability

  Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Yes its sustainable and transferable, because we believe that what we achieved tell now is implementing the New Central System for High Schools Exams only, But our strategy and focus is implement this service to school levels starting from the secondary to intermediate then the primary level.
Of course this require to expand the system and increase the number of trained teachers who will be in charge of dealing with the New Central System for High Schools Exams.
At the end we are planning to perform a survey study to measure the satisfaction of this initiative among the school teachers and administrator

Lessons Learned

 What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
impacts of the initiative and the lessons learned are many for example Announcing the final results for High School students was 3-5 weeks but now it's less than one week, additionally, the time of Installing a new version to old System was more than 20,000 hours but now it's less than one hour .
For “technical support request handling,” it was taking 3-4 days but now its within 24 hours. Accessibly to the system used to take 2000 data entry verifiers and now 25,000 data entry verifiers.
With the new system we succeeded in training more than 11700 trainees
In regard of the Site visits for technical support to fix a damage or system failure there is now is no need for travelling because the system is centralized and any fix is done centrally, but before the Team may travel in some cases more than 200km to fix the problem or offer technical support.

Contact Information

Institution Name:   Ministry of Educatiom
Institution Type:   Government Agency  
Contact Person:   Cottup Saleh
Title:   Dr.  
Telephone/ Fax:   +9664046666
Institution's / Project's Website:   +9664050477
E-mail:   cottup@moe.gov.sa  
Address:   Saudi Arabia - Riaydh ing abdel Aziz Road
Postal Code:   11148
City:   Riyadh
State/Province:   11148
Country:   Saudi Arabia

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