Question by Imran: Is home education legal in Oman?
We home school our two children and are looking at moving to Oman, but want to know if educating children at home is permissible in Oman.
Best answer:
Answer by Sun Bae
Wow.
For once, I’m stumped.
I heard that homeschooling was legal in Quwait but nothing on Oman.
I recommend that you do the following: 1) Contact your nearest Omani Consulate or 2) If there is no Omani Consulate nearby, then contact the Omani Embassy – specifically, the cultural office of the embassy located in Vienna, Virginia.
If you like, you can call them direct at (571) 722-0000 – ask for the academic division, then give them some background on your situation and what you would like to do (i.e., homeschool in Oman).
I put the link to the Omani Embassy down in the source field below.
Hope this helps a bit.
Sun Bae
Home School Educator
ProntoLessons.com
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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July 20th, 2011 at 11:09 pm
No (my daughter just had a report about this), the learning is specific and required to be done exactly “the true way”. It is very religious and supposed to be moderately basic.
FYI: It is the least known and least populated country in the world; as of the last public release of records in 1986.
July 20th, 2011 at 11:32 pm
Well, whatever the “official” situation may be, there are families homeschooling in Oman:
“Following the souq, I had lunch with a couple of other homeschooling mothers and their children. They have both lived in Oman for quite some time, one for 15 years! ………It was a……….neat opportunity for A and O to play with some other American kids their ages who are also homeschooling in a foreign country.”
Quote taken from http://shahramandsarahpaksima.blogspot.com/ , posted under the heading TGIF (Wed), dated Thursday, May 28, 2009. Maybe the owner of the blog could help you out further???
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ADDED: Actually the *official* situation in Oman is that, under Omani law, schooling is entirely optional:
“Education in Oman is provided free of charge up to the end of secondary education, though attendance is not mandatory at any level”. (source: Omani Ministry of Education)
(Current figures put the number of kids enrolled in primary school at 65% and in high school, 58% of boys and 59% for girls.)
Therefore how (& if) you want to educate your children while in Oman is entirely your own business. In the absence of any laws obliging you to send your kids to school, you’re free to do as much or as little, in whatever way, as you wish.
(Until recently there were only three schools in the whole of the country so informal, unofficial home education was the way the vast majority of Omanis learnt to read, write and so on – current literacy levels stand at approx 80% for both males and females).
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@ Lynx, Would love a reference for the claim that Oman is the least known and least populated country in the world. Not sure how “unknown” the country really is nowadays, due, in part, to the large ex-pat communities (c 1 in 8 Omani residents) and increasingly tourist-based economy etc. It is certainly not a closed country in the same way that Myanmar and N.Korea are (and Albania previously was).
As for least populated, that honour goes to Tuvalu, not Oman. Certainly as of 2004, Oman did not feature in the ten least populated nations of the world. Oman has a current population density of 12.5 people/1 sq mile – significantly higher than Australia and Canada, greater than some European nations and roughly on a par with the CIS. Similarly there are heaps of later figures, statistics, data etc available than those published in 1986.
Prior to the coup of the early 1970s, Oman was certainly known as a rather eccentric nation – it was illegal, for instance, to own an umbrella – but either least populated or least known, I don’t think so.