Saturday 03 / May / 2025
Muscat: Three key steps to improve the quality of children and youth development in the Sultanate of Oman are to be implemented by 2025, in collaboration with the UNICEF.
The three outcomes include strengthened evidence-based policies for children; enhanced systems and services for children, and young people; and improved programme effectiveness. These plans have been laid out in Oman’s Country Programme Document, drafted by UNICEF Oman, and have been approved by UNICEF’s Executive Board. Programme priorities include early childhood development; aid to children with disabilities; protection of children from violence; innovative financing for children; evidence generation with a focus on child-related Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) indicators; and youth and adolescents, according to UNICEF Oman.
The first outcome of stronger evidence-based policies, based on along with better public finance analysis and data, can be used to devise better social policies for children, adolescents and young people, and to progress towards the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals.
A key indicator for this outcome includes the monitoring of at least 80 per cent of child-related SDG indicators by 2025, with evidence to be collected through surveys or administrative data. Under this outcome, the data on children must also be separated by governorate and gender. The baseline monitoring rate stood at 56 per cent in 2020.
Programme targets will be verified by data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information and the UNICEF SDG data portal. This outcome also includes a single social registry created as part of an integrated social protection system. Increased expenditure is also planned for across health, education, and social welfare.
Health and education spending are expected to each touch 15 per cent of government expenditure by 2025. Health spending stood at 5.4 per cent, and education at 12.9 per cent of expenditure in 2020.
“A child’s development consists of the biological, psychological and emotional factors, from birth to adolescence, and therefore children’s development needs to be understood and approached holistically,” said Dr Nuhaila Al Rawahi, an educational psychologist in Oman.
“This in turn would require the supportive system around the child to also be holistic and the need for an integrated and early intervention approach becomes an integral part of Vision 2040.
“Given the current pandemic, this has become even more important as I see a rise in parents seeking educational psychology involvement due to developmental delays,” she added.
“I view integrated early childhood development as a sustainability element to achieving His Majesty Sultan Haitham Bin Tarik’s goals for the youth as well as for employing people with disability into the workforce. After all, our youth are children first.”
Outcome number two – enhanced systems for children and youth – makes sure that all young people in Oman, including those with disabilities, benefit from improved social services.
A number of programmes have been earmarked to get this outcome off the ground. Among them are efforts to get 95 per cent of five-year-olds in organised learning, a year prior to their entry into primary school. That figure stood at 79 per cent of boys, and 82.3 per cent of girls in 2018.
Parents and teachers are also encouraged to spend more time with their children between the ages of 18 months and five years, inculcating in them the habit to learn more. The target is for 90 percent of children to have been engaged in four or more activities by promoting learning and school readiness.
Other key elements to this outcome is the Oman National Framework for Future Skills, which provides accredited programmes and licensed training providers, including those relevant to primary, secondary and tertiary education, and the Multi-sectoral Youth Strategy aligned with the Oman government’s Vision 2040.
A key mark of this programme also includes getting more disabled children into learning. As of 2020, only 57 percent of disabled children between the age of five and 17 who were enrolled in education, a number that is planned to go up to 70 per cent by 2025.
The effort to encourage more disabled children to pursue education has been welcomed by Aisha Al Sunaidi, the founder of Rawaq Rehabilitation Centre that provides physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and behaviour modification.
Herself a mother of three children with disabilities, Aisha believes that they too have the right to education and care, just like any other. She said: “Before I began my centre, I had to face many challenges when it came to treating my children in hospitals and rehab centres both inside Oman, as well as overseas.
“I believe that children with disabilities have the right to receive care and attention like any child,” she added. “Rehabilitation and education centres help contribute to developing the skills and abilities of children who suffer from some difficulties, at a location near their place of residence, where they learn to be self-reliant and have a role in their community.”
Other programmes earmarked under the umbrella of enhanced services include the National Strategy and Action Plan for Child Protection; redefining and repurposing social workforce roles for better delivery of welfare and community programmes; and increasing the proportion of children covered by social protection, by providing child-centred, equitable, integrated, and shock-responsive social protection services.
The third outcome of the plan ensures the rest of the initiatives are communicated to societies and delivered in an effective manner. While 80 percent of core measures towards youth development did meet UNICEF criteria in 2020, the aim is for more than 95 percent of them to meet the required standards by 2025.
Furthermore, this outcome ensures that 100 percent of communication and community engagement platforms/ mechanisms supported by UNICEF meet quality standards across development priorities.
“Children must have an important role in the community, and this begins with instilling confidence, values, principles and constructive teachings in them in the classroom,” said Mohammed, a teacher in Oman. “They can then translate that into their homes, with their families, with themselves, and with their community.”
Naif Al Sinani, another teacher, added: “The children of today are the youth of tomorrow. They are the safety valve of every state. Through them, nations rise and countries rise, and it is they who build the country with their hard work, ideas, and ambitions.”
A number of government organisations will join hands to realise these objectives. These include the Ministries of Finance; Economy; Culture, Sports and Youth; Education; Health; and Social Development, the National Committee for Family Affairs, the Tawazun Initiative, and the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI). Research, academic, and professional institutes, the private sector, and civil society will also play a role.
