Strong educational system of Indian schools in Oman

All parents in the world are always looking for better education for their children and most of the time they are in some or other kind of worry regarding it. The pandemic escalated the concerns of parents, especially the parents from the Indian community in Oman. There was an unforeseen shift from the classroom direct teaching to online virtual classroom teaching. Though this shift helped the students to connect with the school and teacher for continued education, it affected their overall school experience to a large extent. However, the best model of Indian community school in Oman helped the students to minimise the limitations. The Indian community schools in Oman are unique in that all these schools function with the support of the parent community.

The only one source of income for the community school is the nominal fee collected from parents. The strong management and support from the apex body of the Indian Schools in Oman, the Board of Directors’ wise and strategic approach helped the schooling system to cope as well as to withstand the worst effects of the pandemic. The model helped the parents and students of the city, village, and remote parts of the country. The cooperation between the school management and community paved the way to support each other and lead to run smaller and larger schools. The community school exhibits high quality of teaching and many schools produce excellent academic results as well as national toppers. In other words, despite all limitations, each school tries to provide better facilities and strives to inculcate values. It is not an exaggeration to say that Indian schools in Oman provide better and qualitative education.

The online education has shifted many aspects of the normal education system and the impact of social distance as well as control over movement brought lots of behavioural and mental stress on both teachers and students. Of course, on parents as well.

The major shock is the complete removal of the ‘Teacher– Students–Classroom’ world and privacy. This has been a major challenge and all faculties and students have still not recovered fully from this. The teacher and student’s classroom world is unique as a lot of things happen inside classroom teaching. The direct physical interaction with the teacher and peer group is a major tonic in the process of socialisation and personality development. The virtual classroom is exposed to third parties and it leads to unwanted stress and tensions for students and teachers. It is funny that all the parents enjoyed the offline classroom and none interfered with the school and teachers. Most of the new gen parents are super teachers and always find fault with teachers and teaching methods. I am not questioning their rights but the way their ideas are expressed sometimes exceed the limits.

Based on my experiences, the shift has increased the workload of teachers as well as students. The primary level students really miss the peer group and good times. Many students are not exposed to the classrooms and attend classes without having any emotional and social attachments to the teachers and school. Teachers have been struggling to identify the students’ talents, capabilities, areas of improvement, understanding the needs, expectations, etc.

It cannot be ignored that the online teaching enhanced the teaching capabilities and many conventional good teachers started using modern techniques while giving online classes. Teachers are becoming more cautious in the preparations and looking for new things to satisfy the expectations of parents and community. The technology ensures time limits and data so that the general concerns on late submissions, missing information, etc can be addressed well.

However, the advantages of offline classes are much more in terms of socialisation, personality development, extracurricular activities, confidence building, emotional tolerance, habit formation, etc.

It is the necessity of the community to run community schools for better education with affordable fees. The model functioning in Oman is the best in the world and many communities in other countries can think and introduce this system for better and qualitative education.

Jaikish Pavithran Former director of BoD of Indian Schools Oman and

former president of Indian School Darsait