News & Event

The Ministry of Education, represented by the Department of Innovation and Scientific Olympiads, is holding, for two days, the National Informatics Olympiad at the Arab Open University. The Olympiad is implemented by the Programming Academy and is targeting (52) students from educational directorates from various governorates in the Sultanate of Oman. During the two-days Olympiad, students compete on procedural programming skills and designing algorithms.

The National Olympiad in Informatics Competition is considered the national version in the Sultanate of Oman of the International Olympiad in Informatics Competition, which is held across the world in more than (90) countries. The idea of the competition is that general education schools compete in solving a set of real-life problems that require the design of computer algorithms to be applied as computer programs during the competition sessions using one of the high-level programming languages.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Badawi, CEO of the Programming Academy, spoke about the competition, saying: “At the end of the first training period, the qualifying competition was held from which 52 participants qualified for the finals of the National Olympiad, which began yesterday, and its activities conclude today. The Olympiad finals are held in two sessions, each of which continues from 3 to 5 continuous hours, so that the contestants are given the same number of questions, varying in their levels. The contestants must solve the largest number of questions within the period specified for each Olympiad session, so that at the end of the competition the results of the two sessions are collected for each contestant, and thus the contestants are ranked based on the highest points.”

Al-Qassim Al-Maamari, Scientific Olympiad specialist at the Department of Innovation and Scientific Olympiads, said: “The National Informatics Olympiad is concerned with modern programming languages that help the student in developing logical thinking skills and problem solving. It also helps in transforming the student from a mere consumer of technology into an effective producer who is able to interact professionally with hardware and software.”

The competition aims to create a qualified generation of Omani youth capable of covering the labor market’s need for professional programmers to work in the future in jobs related to application development, artificial intelligence, information security, and innovation. It also aims to train the emerging generation to work under pressure, teamwork, and introduce the latest developments in the field of specialized algorithms, exchange experiences, and form groups to work on group projects.