section_path: Demographics/Education
section_name: Education
paragraph_text: Education
  
  Education is free at all levels, although higher education is restricted to citizens only. The school system is composed of elementary, intermediate, and secondary schools. Classes are segregated by sex. At the secondary level, students are able to choose from three types of schools: general education, vocational and technical, or religious. The rate of literacy is 99% among males and 96% among females in 2020. Youth literacy rose to approximately 99.5% for both sexes.
  
  Higher education has expanded rapidly, with large numbers of universities and colleges being founded particularly since 2000. Institutions of higher education include King Saud University, the Islamic University at Medina, and the King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. Princess Norah University is the largest women's university in the world. King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, known as KAUST, is the first mixed-gender university campus in Saudi Arabia and was founded in 2009. Other colleges and universities emphasize curricula in sciences and technology, military studies, religion, and medicine. Institutes devoted to Islamic studies, in particular, abound. Women typically receive college instruction in segregated institutions.
  
  The Academic Ranking of World Universities, known as Shanghai Ranking, ranked five Saudi institutions among its 2022 list of the 500 top universities in the world. The QS World University Rankings lists 14 Saudi universities among the 2022 world's top universities and 23 universities among the top 100 in the Arab world. The 2022 list of U.S. News & World Report Best Global University Ranking ranked King Abdulaziz University among the top 50 universities in the world and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology among the top 100 universities in the world.
  
  In 2018, Saudi Arabia ranked 28th worldwide in terms of high-quality research output according to the scientific journal Nature. This makes Saudi Arabia the best performing Middle Eastern, Arab, and Muslim country. Saudi Arabia spends 8.8% of its gross domestic product on education, compared with the global average of 4.6%. Saudi Arabia was ranked 48th in the Global Innovation Index in 2023, up from 68th in 2019.
  
  The Saudi education system has been accused of encouraging Islamic terrorism, leading to reform efforts. Following the 9/11 attacks, the government aimed to tackle the twin problems of encouraging extremism and the inadequacy of the country's university education for a modern economy, by slowly modernizing the education system through the "Tatweer" reform programme. The Tatweer programme is reported to have a budget of approximately US$2 billion and focuses on moving teaching away from the traditional Saudi methods of memorization and rote learning towards encouraging students to analyse and problem-solve. It also aims to create an education system which will provide a more secular and vocationally based training.
  
  In 2021, the Washington Post reported on the measures taken by Saudi Arabia to clean textbooks from paragraphs considered antisemitic and sexist. The paragraphs dealing with the punishment of homosexuality or same-sex relations have been deleted, and expressions of admiration for the extremist martyrdom. Antisemitic expressions and calls to fight the Jews became fewer. David Weinberg, director of international affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said that references to demonizing Jews, Christians, and Shiites have been removed from some places or have toned down. The U.S. State Department expressed in an email that it welcomed the changes. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports a training programme for Saudi teachers.