Sekundarschulen im Oman brauchen ein umfangreicheres Kursangebot. So kann die Zahl der Schulabbrecher gesenkt werden. Gleichzeitig erwerben die jungen Menschen mehr Kompetenzen für den Arbeitsmarkt. Dies stellt Dr. Wajeha Al Ani, Professor an der Pädagogischen Hochschule der Sultan Qaboos Universität, in einer Studie über das Bildungssystem im Oman fest.
Oman education: Greater choice of courses in secondary schools will improve employability
Oman needs to offer secondary schools students more choices to decrease
school dropouts and provide students with skills demanded by the labour market,
said Dr. Wajeha Al Ani, Associate Professor at
the College of Education, Sultan Qaboos University, in a study on the education
system in Oman.
Amid calls for a growing role by the private sector and
the increased promotion of entrepreneurship, Oman is still grappling with
entrenched, traditional methods of education that do not meet the needs of the
job market, according to Al Ani.
Despite the remarkable achievements the
Sultanate has made in the field of universal education, Al Ani argues that the
dropout rates, numbers of repeating students and the significant proportion of
students who fail to reach low international benchmarks for reading, mathematics
and science, call for alternative models of education.
According to Al
Ani, the education system in Oman, which historically depended on memorising and
repetition without encouraging critical thinking and questioning, leads to
students not meeting the demands of employers who want to employ Omanis equipped
with the knowledge, practical skills and technical expertise meeting global
standards.
She notes that low-skilled job seekers find it particularly
difficult to find work, since 40 per cent of job-seekers in 2014 did not have a
General Degree Diploma (GDD). Further, 58.8 per cent of job seekers presented a
GDD, 21.7 per cent a secondary certificate and 10.2 per cent had an elementary
or lower education.
According to Al Ani, the GDD lacks flexibility to
cater to students who might flourish in vocational education. Other countries
have matched education programmes with individual needs to prepare students for
the labour market, which has led to a decrease in the number of dropouts. Al Ani
argues that the Basic Education programme in Oman needs to consider additional
alternatives to more accurately meet current and future demands.
Further,
Al Ani argues that so-called free schools in countries such as Sweden, Chile,
the Netherlands, New Zealand and Qatar better meet the need of students with
diverse needs, including students who drop out of school or have to repeat
classes. Those schools are publicly funded, but have greater autonomy to modify
the pace and scope of the national curriculum. Vocational or technical training
would cater to students who normally drop out of the mainstream educational
system.
Al Ani points to Lebanon, where vocational and technical training
has created new job opportunities for youths and has slowly changed ideas about
such training. She notes that in the Arab World, vocational and technical
training has been traditionally stigmatised due to the low status of manual work
and the notion that it is the last resort for employment.
Based upon
interviews with senior officials of the MoE, who were not identified, Al Ani
notes that Oman already has forms of alternative education, such as vocational
training offered by the Ministry of Manpower, to prepare students to work in a
range of industries. Also, the Ministry of Education (MoE) is working on
developing two tracks of post-basic educational schools, one for science and one
for humanities, in addition to Adult Literacy Centres which hire high school
graduates after they have being trained to teach. Finally, the MoE is working on
a strategic plan for 2030 for General Education Schools and Technical
Education.
Dr. Omar Al Jabri, co-founder
of the job vacancy platform Oman Careers, said the school curriculum, in itself,
is not a problem, but the quality of teaching causes concerns. "I think the
problem lies with the quality of teaching. The curriculum is very strong, but
unfortunately we don’t see any motivation from students. They are relying on
private lessons outside and the outcome of schools is of a low quality," he
said. According to Al Jabri, the curriculum is encouraging students to think and
be creative, but this demands a lot from parents who help their
children.
Khalid Al Far'i, Head of the Education Committee at the Majlis
Al Shura, agrees with Al Ani that the curriculum does not meet the needs of
dropouts. He told the Times of Oman that to solve the problem of dropouts, for
which there are no statistics available, it is "urgently needed to reform the
education curriculum in Oman, from the first to the twelfth grade."
He
noted that the Majlis Al Shura has proposed two plans to tackle this problem
with the Ministry of Education. One plan calls for introducing a compulsory year
before pupils enrol in schools, which is not currently available under the
Ministry of Education. Secondly, students in tenth grade should have the choice
between completing their study programme and transferring to a technical or
vocational programme.
"Those who are on the brink of dropping out will
have other fields to study in. The current curriculum is only designed to
prepare for academic fields and not vocational fields," he
said.
According to Al Far'i, a study carried out by a foreign company has
indicated that these plans will benefit education in Oman.
He also agreed
that graduates from secondary or basic education are not fit for the labour
market.
"Their study programmes are not complete and they need a real
transformation of the education curriculum," he said.