New school year begins in Oman

Muscat: Dr. Madiha bint Ahmed al Shaibaniyah, Minister of Education, extended her gratitude to His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik for the Royal directives to provide school requirements to deserving students.

According to Abdullah Ambosaidi, Undersecretary at the Ministry of Education, the number of books written or developed for the academic year 2022/2023 is 78, and the number of reprinted books has reached is 11, apart from many interactive digital contents.

The total number of requests for external transfer from the faculty and related jobs submitted for the academic year 2022/2023 from Omanis reached (4,905), of which (4,088) are for females, at a rate of 83 percent, and 817 percent for males with a rate of 17 percent.

On Sunday, 1,242 schools received 729,331 male and female students, 57,033 teachers, and 10,834 administrators and technicians from various governorates of the Sultanate to mark the start of the new academic year 2022-2023.

The number of students in 1242 government schools is 729,331, including 368,184 male students (50.9%), and 361147 female students (49.5%).

The are 339 schools for the first cycle 1-4, (306) schools for the second cycle (5-10), (489) schools for the continuing cycle, (14) schools for grades (11-12), and (94) schools for grades (10-12).

Of these, 383 schools are only for boys, (30.8%), 227 schools for girls (18.3%), and 632 joint schools (50.9%).

These schools are divided into morning schools and evening schools.

The number of teachers in all schools of the Sultanate reached 57,033, including 17,396 male teachers 30.5 percent and 39,637 female teachers (69.5%).

Dr. Madiha congratulated the students and members of the teaching, administrative and technical staff on the occasion of the start of the school year, and welcomed the new teachers. "I am pleased to take this opportunity to welcome fellow teachers and new teachers who have had the honor to join us in the educational system. There are 4,000 male and female teachers to contribute to strengthening the work in the various sectors of the ministry, which comes within the framework of global trends aimed at providing the education sector with well-qualified teachers, to secure a better future for learners, to achieve the goals of the fourth goal of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and in line with the strategic direction of the Oman 2040 vision on education."

Dr. Madiha referred to the qualitative shift in the educational curricula, "The conditions and qualitative transformations that the world is going through today require us all to join efforts and do everything in our power to achieve quality and keep pace with the requirements of sustainable development, diversify sources of funding and offer educational paths to enhance."

She touched on authoring the curricula aimed at developing the learner's ability to communicate, developing the learner's research and investigation skills, encouraging him to self-learning, and developing the skills of mastery, leadership, and innovation. Study subjects from 9 to 8 subjects, abolishing Applied Mathematics and replacing it with Basic Mathematics, changing the name of pure mathematics to advanced mathematics, increasing the learning time for mathematics by one class, abolishing science subjects from the list of basic subjects (first group) and making them optional subjects, and abolishing a subject Science and technology from the list of science subjects permanently, and a condition has been added for individual skills subjects. The student chooses only one of the individual skills subjects with the possibility of changing the subject to another subject in grade 12.

Dr. Abdullah bin Khamis Ambosaidi, Undersecretary of the Ministry for Education, stated that the Ministry will complete the implementation of the Oman Wajhati program in cooperation with the Ministry of Heritage and Tourism to train more than 1,500 male and female students from different governorates on entrepreneurship skills and enable them to establish pioneering student companies in the tourism sector. It will complete the implementation of the company’s program in cooperation with the Injaz Oman Foundation, and the “Khairat My School” program in cooperation with the Agricultural and Fisheries Development Fund, with the aim of building and equipping protected homes using hydroponics and fish farming system in schools, which are managed and worked by students in grades (8-11) with professional professionals.

The illiteracy rate in the age group (15-44) has decreased to (0.46%), according to data issued by the National Center for Statistics and Information for the year 2021, and the number of people enrolled in literacy classes for the year 2021-/2022 reached 3,124 while the number of those enrolled in the adult education system for grades (7-12) reached 5,972.

The Undersecretary for Administrative and Financial Affairs confirmed the completion of the ministry’s efforts with regard to replacing non-Omani cadres in specializations that have a large proportion of non-Omanis. The Ministry, in coordination with the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation, to qualify 1,960 male and female graduates by enrolling them in the Educational Qualification Diploma Program with full funding from the Ministry of Labor, within the framework of accelerating the Ministry’s plan towards Omanisation in faculty positions.

The Ministry is moving towards implementing 42 school buildings in all governorates of the Sultanate in cooperation with the private sector, and it is expected that implementation of some of these projects will start early next year. 2023 and completing the rest of the projects successively.