TEACH ENGLISH IN SAUDI ARABIA Answers to FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)
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Questions about life in Saudi? Click on the topics below (or scroll down).

Academic Support • Accommodation • Advances of Salary • Ages of Learners • Bank Accounts for Salary Payment • Budgeting for Living Expenses • Class Sizes • Contract Lengths • Cost of Living • Course Content • Currency Remittances • Dress Code • Exchange Rates • Flights • Health Insurance • Holiday Dates • Induction of Teachers • Levels of Learners' English • Locations Where There Are Vacancies • Maximum Teaching Hours • Medical for the "Iqama" • Minimum Monthly Salary Paid • Number of Teachers Required • Sick Leave • Sports Facilities • Tax Situation • Teaching Resources • Teaching Schedule • Timetables for Lessons • Travel to and from Work • Visas • Weather and Clothing • Working in Different Locations

Academic Support

• A director of studies is located in the Jubail and Riyadh centres to support teachers there and in remote cities.
• We also support teachers who are working on corporate assignments, although such teachers are usually supervised and supported on a daily basis by the client's training personnel.

Accommodation

• Bachelor status furnished accommodation is provided free of charge. However, teachers are required to pay their own utility bills (electricity, water and telephone). Accommodation is located near the place of work, and is fully furnished, with bedding provided. The teacher needs to provide his own towels.
• A TV set is provided, and it is possible to receive about 20 cable channels in the Eastern Province. But those wanting a greater choice need to pay for a satellite dish, plus decoder. Those who live in Riyadh and some remote areas will also need a dish if they want more than the two basic Saudi channels, one of which is in English.

Advances of Salary

• If a teacher is short of money when he takes up an appointment, we can provide him an advance on arrival to see him through to his first pay day.

Ages of Learners

• Most learners are aged 18 to 35 years, although on company courses where we teach long-standing adult employees, learners are 30 to 50 years old.
• To date we have not taught trainees aged under 15, but starting soon we aim to provide courses for learners aged 9 to 14.

Bank Accounts for Salary Payment

• All teachers are required to open bank accounts, for which the company provides the necessary letter of introduction.
• Salaries for each month worked are deposited into teachers' accounts on the first day of the following month. This applies even if a teacher has arrived and started work part of the way through the month, in which case he receives the due portion of one month's salary.

Budgeting for Living Expenses

• We recommend that a teacher budgets to spend around 500 riyals per week. This is about £85 sterling, €125 or US$135 per week (although the exchange rate of the riyal against the pound sterling and the euro are variable).
• Some teachers who are anxious to save manage to spend less than this, and therefore save almost all their salary.
• Others develop a more consumerist lifestyle (shopping, taking advantage of cheap domestic air travel and cheap car hire, and of watersports opportunities such as diving), and so manage to spend a lot more than this.
• Those teachers who have been with us for several years sometimes buy a car.
• We recommend that teachers bring some money with them if possible (but see the section on advances of salary).

Class Sizes

• These vary from one assignment to the other. Industrial contract class sizes usually average around 15 students per class.
• Some corporate projects for young adult trainees can have as many as twenty or so trainees per class, but these are the exception rather than the norm.
• On publicly enrolled groups at our centres, numbers average 4 to 8 students per class.

Contract Lengths

• These are flexible. We like to hire people for one-year periods, but if we have a candidate who has something to offer our organization who can only commit himself for a short period, then we will try to tailor him an assignment and contract accordingly.
• The vast majority of our staff have been with us for longer than a year. Either they have chosen to renew their contracts with us, or they have returned after a period of time away.
• By Gulf standards, our staff-retention rate is very high and at the top end of the scale in Saudi Arabia. The two main reasons for this are as follows:
  • The work is satisfying, as we attract good quality clients, who present us good quality teaching assignments in most cases.
  • We are can be flexible in terms of granting teachers sabbaticals or periods of extended unpaid leave. So we have a strong base of teachers we can draw on for flexible periods of service.

Cost of Living

• The cost of living is considerably cheaper than it is in Europe or North America.
• A medium-sized meal in a canteen or fast-food restaurant costs 18 riyals, or less. A soft drink costs one riyal, even in a café. Fancy restaurants are more expensive, but still provide excellent value for money. There's usually a good range of oriental, Arabic and Indian restaurants.
• Those who choose to cook for themselves are pleasantly surprised by the cheap price of staple foods and fruit and vegetables from the Gulf region.

Course Content

• Almost all our teaching is of general English, both on publicly-enrolled part-time courses, and on our corporate full-time intensive courses.
• However, we are also active at the specialized end of the scale, providing consultancy-style services (such as authoring test products for recruitment departments of banks) or teaching specialized ESP courses for industry.
• We have also undertaken major projects for industry: our joint venture project with British Steel, training Saudi Steel Company, is one example. For this project alone we hired 50 teachers and 10 management staff to work over a six month period in three different cities in the Saudi Arabia. We have undertaken similar large-scale projects for major utility clients.

Currency Remittances

• Currency exchange services, travellers' cheques and remittance services are all easily available. The export and conversion of currency is well established and well supported.

Dress Code

• The teacher must look presentable at all times. Shirt, tie, smart trousers (not jeans) and shoes (not trainers) should be worn at all times for work.
• A teacher should also wear a watch for work, or have a small travel clock if he does not like to wear a watch.
• Teachers should not wear shorts in public, and long hair or pony tails for men are still socially unacceptable in Saudi Arabia, in spite of the considerable easing of restrictions that has taken place over the last few years.

Exchange Rates

• The rates against the pound sterling and the euro are variable, but average SAR6 = £1 and SAR4 = €1. Against the dollar, the rate is fixed at SAR3.75 = US$1.

Flights

• An open return ticket is provided to teachers by Al Rajhi Company upon hire. This ticket covers the journey to Saudi Arabia on commencement of the contract, and the journey back to the UK upon completion.
• If a teacher takes scheduled annual leave we provide an additional return flight ticket or a flight allowance to cover this.

Health Insurance

• Al Rajhi Company provides 75% medical cover. This means a teacher must pay 25% of any prescription costs and 25% of the costs of any medical treatment he receives in the Saudi Arabia. No dental, ophthalmic or psychiatric cover is provided.

Holiday Dates

• These are agreed between employer and employee. Traditionally Ramadan (at present in the autumn) is the month when most staff take annual leave since there is a minimum staffing requirement at our centres during this month.

Induction of Teachers

• In most cases, teachers go straight into teaching.
• Those who start out as centre-based teachers, working a split shift, get a gentler introduction and may have less teaching to do initially.
• We tend to assign younger, less experienced teachers to our centres to start with, so that they can build up their Saudi teaching experience before assignment to company projects.
• Generally speaking, most teachers prefer to work on company assignments on a single-shift basis, even if this means going in cold.
• Almost all our clients use instructors for teaching duty starting from day one. Having said that, the teaching is usually clear-cut and fairly straightforward. If necessary, we can prepare lessons for the teacher's first few days.

Levels of Learners' English

• Levels mainly range from beginner to pre-intermediate standard.
• There is a huge effort underway in Saudi Arabia to Saudiize the workforce in white-collar positions (management, clerical and services) and in blue-collar jobs (industry, utilities and services). This means many companies are training Saudi high school and college graduates in English as a first step, before giving them vocational training. Since the quality of state-school English teaching has been poor, many graduates have a weak command of English.
• By comparison, on projects where we train company employees, especially on our ESP courses, the levels taught can be quite high. There is a also a strong demand for TOEFL and IELTS standard courses at our centres.

Locations Where There Are Vacancies

• Our two main locations are Jubail, in the Eastern Province, and Riyadh, the capital, which is in the Central Province, but we are also active in most major cities of Saudi Arabia, organizing on-site courses for our clients.
• We have conducted training recently in the following cities: Riyadh, Jubail, Dammam, Hofuf, Buraydah, Rafha, Abha, Najran, Sakaka, Baha, Khobar, Arar, Yanbu, Medinah and Jeddah. · New recruits are usually based in Jubail, Yanbu or Riyadh.

Maximum Teaching Hours

• The maximum number of hours a teacher may be asked to teach per week is 30 hours. However, 27.5 hours is the norm.
• The overall working week is 40 hours and is made up of hours of teaching, plus office hours.

Medical for the "Iqama"

• An iqama is a civil ID document that is issued by the Saudi Government to all expatriate workers in the kingdom.
• On arrival in Saudi Arabia, teachers are required to have a medical before an iqama can be processed.
• An iqama is essential to open a bank account.
• Once a teacher has been issued an iqama, he must keep it with him at all times.

Minimum Monthly Salary Paid

• A teacher is paid his salary in full per month regardless of the number of hours he has worked, up to the maximum of thirty per week. · Teachers on average work around 27.5 hours per week over their contract period.
• Some corporate clients provide occasional or periodic breaks in training where instructors have time free for materials preparation, but almost all projects require teachers to be teaching.

Number of Teachers Required

• Requirements for teachers varies depending on the number of major projects we are servicing at the time.
• The minimum number of teachers employed is usually about thirty, while the highest number can be up to a hundred.

Sick Leave

• Teachers are paid for days that they are sick and off work, provided that they have obtained a valid sick note from the doctor.
• Teachers are advised on arrival which clinic they should go to, normally the clinic where they had their iqama medical.

Sports Facilities

• Many of our staff join local gyms or sports clubs (usually at nearby hotels).
• Watersports are also available in season at coastal locations.
• For those who like fishing, there are excellent opportunities for this in Jubail and in Yanbu. The sea-fishing in these locations is excellent.

Tax Situation

• Al Rajhi Company for Human Resources Development pays gross salaries to teachers without any tax being deducted. This is because there is no tax deductible from expatriate teacher salaries in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
• However, teachers should check on their tax status back home, since a UK national, for example, may only be permitted a limited number of weeks residence in the UK per tax year before his earnings in Saudi Arabia become tax deductible if they are transferred to the UK.

Teaching Resources

• In the main, instructors follow assigned course books, which they supplement with work-related material and with various communication activities.
• Some projects require a lot of supplementary listening work.
• Since learners in Saudi Arabia are brought up according to a Koranic learning tradition, the idea of a book or central text plays an important role in learning. Trainees tend to regard anything that is "not the book" (be it a Headway or a Reward book) as of secondary importance.
• Photocopies therefore have to be presented tidily, and with sufficient pre-teaching. Any materials that appear haphazard in delivery are not likely to go down as well as they would in a more European TEFL environment, where a lot of lesson time may be taken up with "instant activity" photocopiable materials rather than with the assigned course book materials. · For some projects we are required to use the client's own in-house teaching materials. Where this happens the materials are usually tried and tested, albeit a bit dated, since the companies that use their own TEFL materials tend to be well-established ones with a strong record of in-house training.
• On an increasing number of projects, however, we are asked to supply the materials and not just the instructors. This is preferable to us, since it permits us greater academic control of a project. For projects where we supply the materials, we tend to go for the following titles:
  • Basic English for Arabs, English Please
  • Reward series
  • New Headway series
  • Business Basics, Objectives, Opportunities series
  • Other titles as needed (English for Technical Students, LTP titles, etc)
• We also do an increasing amount of ESP teaching, for which we author materials. For example we have delivered courses to date using our own materials in the following ESP areas:
  • English for SAP Systems terminology
  • English for Technical Report Writing
  • English for Technical Documentation
  • English for Maintenance Technicians
  • English for Maintenance Scheduling and Planning
  • English for Industrial Operations
  • English for Safety Training Purposes
  • English for Welding
  • English for Pipefitting
• There is a good selection of supplementary materials at our large Jubail centre, where much of our materials-authoring and test-writing activity is based.
• In our Riyadh centres and in more remote cities the availability of resources is limited. This is mainly because learners tend to expect courses to follow the course book, albeit with energetic and intelligent supplementing by the teacher.
• Having said that, students usually appreciate negotiated or real life supplementary materials and activities. These materials and activities or need to be group-derived as much as possible (for example, project work, case studies, authentic materials provided by trainees). Simply throwing photocopied activities at trainees does not work well. Somehow, the teacher needs to create a chemistry in the group, with effective elicitation, pre-teaching and boardwork, before attempting to introduce supplementary material.
• The process of supplementing the book, or of conducting extension activities, is quite an exposed one, so the teacher cannot just hide behind photocopies. Instead he needs to make a sincere and honest effort to draw from the real-life knowledge and input from the group.
• A teacher who does not know the names of everyone in his class, or who does not have a fully honest and direct rapport with them, but who uses nice glossy laminated flashcards for a slick Headway pairwork activity may get by. But a teacher who knows everyone in his class by name, and who enjoys a good rapport with his group, will have an excellent lesson even if the materials he uses for the pairwork activity are simple, humble materials: with pictures or words written out in felt pen on scrap paper.
• While such material may be crude in its finish, the learners will know where it has come from: from the heart and mind of a teacher whom they have come to know and trust. Saudi learners do not trust or believe in teachers who are remote strangers, however glossy their materials may be.
• There is something very native, personable and local about teaching success in Saudi Arabia. A good teacher plus a mediocre course book achieve much more than an average teacher who has glossy materials and quick and easy access to photocopies and activities. Learners like to see that their teacher is really active and is really working.
• Self-access learning, self-directed learning and reliance on materials only are not enough in Saudi Arabia. EFL learners in Saudi see the teacher as the person who can enlighten them.
• Teaching can be very rewarding for instructors who earn the trust of their students. Those who do so get full cooperation and full support at all times from learners, even on the bad days when the teacher may not be feeling or performing his best.

Teaching Schedule

• Teachers work five days per week, from Saturday to Wednesday. This is the working week in the Gulf region.

Timetables for Lessons

• Timetables for teaching are well established in Saudi Arabia, whether teachers are working on a single-shift or on a split-shift basis. This means it is easy for the teacher to develop a fixed and stable routine.

Travel to and from Work

• Teachers are paid a standard transport allowance of 400 riyals per month in addition to their basic salary. This covers taxi journeys to and from work each day.
• Housing is located close to the place of work in almost all cases, but where 400 riyals is insufficient, the company pays the difference.
• Some teachers manage to save all their transportation allowance, for example by walking to work, or cycling. However, there is too much traffic in Riyadh to make cycling a safe means of transport.
• For certain projects, the company provides a driver to take the teacher to and from work each day in lieu of the monthly transport allowance.

Visas

• All costs incurred for obtaining a visa are met by Al Rajhi Company (processing costs plus a medical in the UK or the USA).
• However, teachers are required to meet the cost of their travel to and from the medical, plus the cost of passport photos.

Weather and Clothing

• In Jeddah, Jubail and Yanbu (on the coast) summer daytime temperatures can reach 45 degrees and at night remain around 30 degrees. Humidity is high. Winter temperatures are between 10 and 25 degrees.
• In Riyadh the humidity is much lower and more tolerable than in the other locations.
• Clothing should be light (especially in July and August). A jacket will be necessary during the winter months (especially December and January).
• Standard western clothing, shoes and sports clothes are very easy to buy in Saudi Arabia, and are often considerably cheaper than they would be back home.

Working in Different Locations

• Almost all our teachers remain in one work location during their contract term. This is because staff tend to join sports clubs, or develop networks of friends which tie them to a particular city.
• It's in our interest to keep teachers happy, so we do not like to relocate them if they prefer to stay where they are.
• Most teachers are based either in Jubail or Riyadh.
• However, it is easy for us to relocate a teacher if he requests a change of scene, because we are active in several cities in Saudi Arabia. Some teachers like to be relocated for variety.
• We also have occasional projects in more remote cities, some of which are very attractive geographically, such as Abha, in the Assir region. Teachers who are independent often enjoy working on their own on these more remote projects, but the majority, particularly those who are more gregarious, prefer to be in centres such as Jubail and Riyadh, where we have larger networks of Western staff.
• If a teacher does not want to be moved about from city to city, we almost always respect that preference and allow the person to settle down in one place.
• Having said that, a teacher may be asked to cover teach for a week or two in a different city to help out, for example when a teacher has to take emergency leave. We've noted that in such cases the cover teacher usually appreciates the short change of scene, and finds it an interesting break. However, these instances are quite rare, since local cover by a director of studies or assistant, is usually available for short-term absences.

Aidan Chalk, Managing Director

The European Centre for Languages and Training

a subsidiary of

Al Rajhi Company for Human Resources Development