As thousands of children returned to school on Sunday, the day was also marred by a tragic incident in which a tenth-grade school student died after she was run over by a vehicle on Al Noor Street in Al Maabela area in the Wilayat of Al Seeb.
In a statement, her institution, Umm Waraqah Al Ansariyah School, said, "The school administration and the faculty mourn the student, Hoor bint Hatim al Sadiyah of the tenth grade, who passed away today."
Meanwhile, Dr Madeeha 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.
On Sunday, 1,242 schools received 729,331 male and female students, 57,033 teachers, and 10,834 administrators and technicians from various governorates to mark the start of the new academic year (2022-2023).
Dr Madeeha congratulated the students, teaching, administrative and technical staff on the start of the school year. "I am pleased to take this opportunity to welcome fellow teachers and new teachers who have had the honour to join us in the educational system. There are 4,000 male and female teachers to strengthen the work in various sectors of the ministry, which comes within the framework of global trends aimed at providing the education sector with well-qualified teachers."
She referred to the qualitative shift in the educational curricula. "The conditions and qualitative transformations that the world is going through today require all of us to join efforts and do everything in our power to achieve quality and keep pace with the requirements of sustainable development, diversify funding sources, and offer educational paths to enhance."
The minister touched on the curricula aimed at developing the learner's ability to communicate, research, self-learn, and develop qualities of leadership and innovation.
Dr Abdullah bin Khamis Ambosaidi, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Education for Education, said the ministry will complete the implementation of the 'Wajhati' programme 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.
He said the ministry is moving towards building 42 school buildings in all governorates of Oman in cooperation with the private sector. It is expected that the implementation of some of these projects will start early next year (2023), and the rest of the projects successively.
The number of students in 1,242 government schools is 729,331, including 368,184 male students (50.9 per cent), and 361,147 female students (49.5 per cent). 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 per cent), 227 schools for girls (18.3 per cent), and 632 joint schools (50.9 per cent). These schools are also divided into morning schools and evening schools.
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