“Saudi Arabia’s Education Ministry recently announced the introduction of a new curriculum for the kingdom’s schools,  which involves, among other changes, a reduction of hours devoted to religious studies. As part of the reform, Qur’an and Islamic studies have been merged into a single subject and the number of classes devoted to these two topics has been reduced from 34 to 15 weekly classes in middle school and from 38 to 30 weekly classes in primary school. In addition, a new subject, financial education, will be introduced in high school. Further changes in the curriculum have not year been made public, but the online London-based daily Raialyoum.com reported that the hours devoted to math, science, English and Arabic will be increased.”

[Memri]