Unicef hails Oman for closing gender gap but notes poor education record

The Unicef (United Nations Children's Fund) has lauded Oman's achie-vements in closing the gender gap.

While praising the Sultanate in its annual flagship publication, titled the State of the World's Children, it did note, however, that access to pre-school education was still low in Oman.

It also highlighted the need to look into the fact that a large number of adolescent boys were repeating their grade, or dropping out.

June Kunugi, Unicef Representative in Oman said: "This year's report has focused on one of the most crucial issues facing the development of the community today. The report is a call to action on behalf of the millions of children who are not in school around the world, most of whom are girls."

"The report is a call on every nation engaged in the development to make education of all children, with an emphasis on girls, a major focus of investment," Kunugi said.

Oman was clearly seeing the benefits of its visionary investment and policy of providing universal access and free basic education to both boys and girls, which saw the education infrastructure expand from three schools with 900boys in 1970 to some 1,144 schools today providing education to over 591,424 students, the report said.

But, there was a need to increase the numbers of young children receiving pre-school education as many students have proven that attention to early childhood development and ensuring that children acquire early on the rhythm of schooling before primary school have multiple benefits, including healthy development, study, skills and socialisation, which increase learning achievements later on and prevent repetition and dropouts, the report added.

While there is currently a high-level inter-ministerial coordination group looking at the issue of pre-school education in Oman, greater support from parents, communities and the private sector would help increase attendance and access to quality pre-sch-ool education, it said.