Female illiteracy rate further decreases

Female illiteracy rate further decreases

Oman’s female illiteracy rate decreased to 5.2% in 2020 from 7.3% in 2016

Muscat – The sultanate has exerted great efforts since 1973/74 to combat illiteracy.

The National Centre for Statistical Information’s (NCSI) data shows there were 1,357,405 females, representing 49.6 per cent of the total Omani population, in December 2020. The governorates of North Batinah and Muscat recorded the highest number of females – 40 per cent – compared to the remaining governorates.

NCSI’s statistics confirmed that the Omani female illiteracy rate dropped to 5.2 per cent in 2020.

The illiteracy rate in the sultanate decreased to 5.78 per cent in the age group of 15 years and older. The literacy rate was 94.22 per cent at the end of 2018.

Making illiteracy a national issue, the Ministry of Education has set up a number of support projects through partnerships between government and private sector institutions. These include the ‘Training Bag Project’ that contains basic scientific material to be used to train teaching staff in literacy classes and raise their professional level and teaching skills.

In the academic year of 2020/2021, the total number of Omani females studying in public schools was 321,690 out of a total of 652,606 (male and female), while the total