The Education Ministry has discovered that students at Talib bin Omar primary school in Al-Natheem neighborhood, in east Riyadh, were responsible for tearing up school books recently.

The department would not issue the grades of these students until an investigation is completed into the incident, said Mubarak Al-Osaimi, spokesman of the ministry, in a message on Twitter.

The ministry has condemned the behavior of the students. The video of the students’ behavior went viral recently, showing hundreds of torn books strewn outside a school.
Al-Osaimi warned that the ministry was taking a serious view of this trend among school students. “This cannot be termed a social occasion or part of school celebrations,” said Al-Osaimi.

He said the education ministry plans to help students celebrate properly, especially the older boys who were involved in creating the chaos.

Al-Osaimi said Prince Khaled Al-Faisal, the minister of education, condemned the students’ behavior.

“Children should value books that contain not only verses from the Holy Qur’an, sayings of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and the history of the nation, but are also treasure houses of knowledge,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Riyadh education official has rejected allegations that a video showing students vandalizing a classroom by breaking the windows and blackboard took place in the capital city.
This incident took place five days after the video surfaced showing students tearing up their school books. Twitter users have condemned both incidents.

Officials and educators in Riyadh conducted field visits after seeing the video, but claimed they found no evidence of the incident at local schools, according to the official.

In a related matter, Prince Khaled has issued a directive for schools to set up competitions in 16 sports at male schools. The plan includes training for students.

The ministry announced in a report recently that its vocational development program benefited around 230 education supervisors, 1,600 physical education teachers and 1,000 school principals. The program had also trained 90 trainers in 50 training sessions and 13 workshops, in addition to developing a strategy for school sports.