A model for estimating the budget for constructing schools in Saudi Arabia

The government of Saudi Arabia allocates a generous part of its national budget for human resource development and for improving the nation's literacy level. The government pays special attention to pre-college education, which it provides to the citizens and expatriates free of charge. The Ministry of Education faces many short and long-term challenges. The population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in an exponential increase and accordingly so is the number of students. On the other hand, the country's revenue from oil is unstable and, therefore, the ministry budget is affected. The construction of new school buildings is always frozen when revenue is short because of low oil prices. This article presents a model that is based on regression analysis for estimating the required budget for building a school.