The Time Difference Between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia

Two hours, and nothing to remember

Arabia Standard Time is UTC+3 and the Kingdom does not observe daylight saving. Pakistan is UTC+5 and does not either. The conversion is therefore a fixed subtraction of two hours that applies in Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Madinah, Makkah and everywhere else in the country, on every date in the year.

There is no equivalent of the British spring and autumn adjustment, and no regional variation inside the Kingdom to check.

• 14:00 PKT = 12:00 AST, our first weekday class
• 16:00 PKT = 14:00 AST, by which time most Saudi school days have finished
• 18:00 PKT = 16:00 AST, the late-afternoon stretch before Maghrib
• 20:00 PKT = 18:00 AST
• 22:00 PKT = 20:00 AST, the last weekday class
• 10:00–20:00 PKT = 08:00–18:00 AST at weekends

The Saudi day starts early, which changes everything

Saudi schools begin early, commonly around 07:00, and finish in the early afternoon. That produces something no other country we teach into has: a long free stretch from roughly 14:00 AST onwards that sits in the middle of our teaching day rather than at the edge of it.

A British family is negotiating for the last ninety minutes of our timetable. A Saudi family can take 14:00, 15:00 or 16:00 AST, all of which are 16:00 to 18:00 in Lahore, comfortably inside ordinary tutoring hours on both sides. It makes the Kingdom one of the two easiest countries we schedule, alongside the UAE, and for a completely different reason: not a small offset, but a school day that ends when ours is beginning.

The evening is broken by prayer, not by the clock

The constraint that actually decides a Saudi slot is not the time difference, which never moves, but the prayer times, which move constantly. The reliable stretch is between Asr and Maghrib in the late afternoon, and it is a good place to put a weekly class because it is bounded at both ends and everyone in the household knows where those ends are.

The complication is that Maghrib follows sunset, so it arrives earliest in December and latest in June, more than an hour apart. A fixed weekly slot booked in January against a comfortable margin can be running into the adhan by June without anybody having changed anything. We look at Saudi slots again in the spring for that reason rather than waiting for a family to raise it.

The other direction is worth noting too. A class after Isha is a normal thing in a Saudi household in a way it is not in a British one, and our last slot at 20:00 AST is well inside the evening rather than at the end of it.

Two different weekends, and how they line up

Pakistan's weekend is Saturday and Sunday. Saudi Arabia's is Friday and Saturday. That mismatch is more useful than it sounds, because it means each country's timetable is at its most open on a day the other is working.

Sunday is the one to plan around. It is a Saudi school day and a Pakistani weekend, so our hours that day are 08:00–18:00 AST, which means the after-school portion runs from about 14:00 to 18:00. Families who want a Sunday lesson should aim there rather than at the evening, which is outside our weekend hours.

• Friday: a Saudi weekend day on our weekday timetable, 12:00–20:00 AST. Popular after Jumu'ah.
• Saturday: a weekend on both sides, 08:00–18:00 AST, the widest choice of the week.
• Sunday: a Saudi school day on our weekend timetable, so 08:00–18:00 AST, usable from about 14:00.
• Monday to Thursday: ordinary school days on both sides, 12:00–20:00 AST.

Ramadan

School hours are shortened across the Kingdom and the household day rebuilds itself around Iftar and Taraweeh. Afternoon slots that ran all year become impractical, and the sensible move is to the end of our teaching day, 18:00 to 20:00 AST.

We shift Saudi students for the month rather than pausing them, because a month out of a mathematics programme in the middle of an examination year is expensive to recover. The 22:00 PKT finish exists largely so that this move is possible at all.