Online lessons to continue in full swing till weekend

The second semester of the current academic year (2020-2021) in public schools started with distance learning mode on Sunday. The online learning mode will continue till March 11. The Supreme Committee said it will evaluate developments of the epidemiological situation in the Sultanate during this period and accordingly decide whether to continue online mode or return to blended education. With the decision, students continue to receive lessons in public schools by distance learning, which is aimed at assuring the continuation of the educational process and maintaining health and safety of students and parents, especially with the seriousness of this stage of Covid-19 in which the disease is spreading at local and global levels. In the middle of January, the Supreme Committee allowed a gradual return to schools through blended education. This decision was based on many justifications, the most important being the positive results in the application of health protocol in schools, decrease in cases, and also to increase empowerment of first-stage students with basic skills in reading, writing, mathematical skills, besides the new curricula. The return was restricted to the first, fourth, fifth, ninth and eleventh grades, according to the announcement of the Ministry of Education at that time. Faisal bin Ali al Busaidy, Assistant Director-General of Information Technology at the Ministry of Education, confirmed that the Sultanate’s schools will continue to activate the educational platforms in the remote education system for various classes through the two platforms, Google Classroom and Mandhara. He also noted there will be synchronous and asynchronous lessons to complement the efforts made in this aspect during the first semester. He pointed out that the indicators of the use of educational platforms during the first semester for the various grades were high and very good, whether through sync and async lessons, uploading educational files, assignments, and educational evaluation questions. Till January the rate of use of educational platforms by schools has exceeded more than 70 million MB. There are more than 150,000 virtual operational classrooms, more than 300,000 daily active users in concurrent classes, and more than 3 million participants.