MUSCAT: The education sector in the Sultanate of Oman has grown dramatically during the last 50 years due to significant government investment.
According to the latest report published by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the number of schools increased from 16 in 1970, with just 196 teachers and 7,000 students, to 67,263 schools and 710,000 students during the academic year 2021/2022. The overall number of pupils enrolled in government, private, special education, and international schools reached 898,000, a 12 per cent rise from 2020/21. It is worth mentioning that school students account for 20 per cent of the Sultanate of Oman's overall population.
Higher education has undergone major transformation in the last two years to achieve sustainability and the development of the educational system, the most significant of which was the establishment of the University of Technology and Applied Sciences, which included all technical colleges and colleges of applied sciences under its umbrella.
In the academic year 2020/2021, there were 66 public and private institutions, including 38 government institutions classed as universities, university colleges, and specialised institutes, and 28 private institutions, nine of which are private universities and the rest are university colleges. These institutions educate approximately 121,000 students, accounting for approximately 3 per cent of the overall population, in addition to approximately 7,000 students studying abroad.
The data demonstrates the Sultanate of Oman's commitment to attaining the goals of education for everyone, the most significant of which are: Enabling children to complete elementary school, as Oman attained a total enrolment rate in the primary stage of (100 per cent). As for the expansion of early childhood care and education programmes, the enrolment rate of children has fallen. The total preschool education in kindergartens reached about 25 per cent of the total population at the age of 4-5 years in the academic year (2020/2021 compared to 52 per cent in the academic year 2019/2020), and this fall is due to decrease in the number of private schools which provides education service for this stage due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The population's illiteracy rate fell to around 0.5 per cent for the age range of 15-44.
The report also stated that there were approximately 320 children's nurseries in 2021, up from only 16 in 1989, with Muscat topping the list with approximately 179 facilities, while the Governorate of Al Wusta has no nurseries registered. The number of children under the age of three who are registered in nurseries is 6,073, a 6 per cent rise over the previous year.
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