MUSCAT: The Sultanate of Oman alongside the other world countries and Unesco today marks the International Literacy Day observed on September 8 annually.
This year, the International Literacy Day is marked under the slogan ‘Promoting Multilingual Education: Literacy for Mutual Understanding and Peace’.
The Sultanate of Oman has since 1973 endeavoured to combat illiteracy and eliminate all its forms including reading, writing, cultural and civilisational illiteracy. The Ministry of Education, represented by the Directorate-General of Special Education and Continuing Education, is concerned with building educational programmes for some society segments that do not fall under the umbrella of formal education such as: adult learners in literacy classrooms, adult education, students in care homes, correctional institutions (prisons) as well as people with disabilities (special education).
The ministry also provided a set of facilities for students in literacy classrooms including: providing the curricula of grades 1, 2 and 3, preparing and qualifying those in charge of teaching from Omani graduates of the General Education Diploma (GED) and above to teach in literacy classes, granting literacy certificates to students, qualifying the learners to join the adult education system, opening classrooms, supervising their progress by specialised supervisors and providing online registration in the literacy system through the educational portal.
In addition, the ministry implemented a number of programmes and projects such as: the learning villages programme, the cooperative schools programme, the literacy project for the Ministry of Education’s illiterate employees, the literacy project for illiterate citizens in the private sector, the literacy project for residents of islands and sea villages, and the literacy project for illiterate disabled citizens.
The educated village project aims to eliminate all forms of illiteracy through combined efforts of the local communities. The programme was launched in 2004 and the total number of educated villages reached 30 in 203 educational departments and a total of 2,438 students have so far benefited from the programme in various governorates.
The Ministry of Education also implemented the cooperative school project with some schools adopting some literacy departments whether inside or outside the school in terms of managing, supervising and providing volunteer teachers. The project was implemented as an experiment in the 2003-2004 academic year and the project was later generalised in the governorates with the number of participating schools reaching 50 in the 2023/2024 academic year. — ONA
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