In response to a visionary approach to the development of future opportunities for the nation and its people, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has set itself ambitious goals in relation to the outcomes of general education. The overall goals are set out in the Tenth Development Plan 2015 – 2019, which details strategies for achieving the Kingdom’s aspirations to transform itself into a knowledge society.

 The Council of Ministers has established a high level organization, the Public Education Evaluation Commission (PEEC), with a broad mandate to effect reforms in areas of general education including a National Qualifications Framework, a national Curriculum Framework, professional standards for both teachers and school leaders, professional licensing, national evaluation of schools and Districts, assessment of students, research and development, and participation in international quality assurance arrangements.

 PEEC has committed itself to an objective of having Saudi Arabia numbered among the top 20 nations in terms of student achievement by the year 2025. It is acknowledged by PEEC and across the Kingdom that such improvement in student achievement can only be achieved through a marked improvement in the quality of teaching across the sector. To this end, PEEC is undertaking the establishment and implementation of professional standards for Saudi Arabia’s teachers, and the introduction of a system of professional licensing based on these Standards, as mandated by the Council of Ministers.

This paper reports how PEEC has set out to develop the Saudi Arabia Professional Teacher Standards -

• principles on which they are based;
• analysis of national, regional and international research evidence that has informed their initial development;
• investigative and analytical processes that have been undertaken to develop and further refine the draft Standards; and
• rigorous research-based process of validation of the Standards that is underway.

A major component of the paper is how various members of the PEEC team and the national and international partners approached the many questions needing to be addressed through this research-based process, and the outcomes of investigation of these issues.

The questions include:-

- What do Saudi teachers and the education community identify as characteristics of good teachers?

- How well do the draft Standards align with

• National educational, economic, social and cultural contexts?
• Internal PEEC objectives and strategies, including concurrent outputs of other PEEC reform projects?
• International evidence about teacher standards and quality teaching?

- To what extent are the draft Standards internally valid and reliable?

- To what extent do the Kingdom’s teachers believe the draft Standards are both aspirational and achievable?

The paper provides considerable detail about the nature and content of the data generated during each phase, and presents a number of key findings and conclusions that are informing the ongoing development of this quality teaching reform.

While the key focus of the paper is on the case of improving teaching in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is strongly relevant to international policy development and practice – in a global (including European) context as well as in relation to regional Gulf and other Arab jurisdictions. Globalization of economies, social movements and ideas, as well as of educational policy and impact, mean that developments in a society as important to world economics and stability as Saudi Arabia are relevant across borders. Of equal relevance to international developments are the analyses, interpretations and applications of research evidence – regional and international – that have informed the Standards development and the methodologies and outcomes of the scientific approach to validation. Further, the paper shows how educational researchers and policy experts from Europe and across the world have been engaged in the development of the Standards at all stages.

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