News & Event

In preparation for the new academic year 2024/2025, the Ministry of Education seeks to prepare school transportation to be at the forefront of priorities and concerns to ensure a comfortable and safe educational environment for students. The Ministry has focused on basic procedures to improve the quality and efficiency of school transportation, including renewing contracts, providing new transportation that meets safety standards, and implementing training programs for drivers and students on preventive driving and road safety.

Khamis Al-Hadidi, Director-General of the Directorate-General of Projects and Services, explained that the Ministry has formed committees from various educational directorates to examine current school transportation means, and has renewed contracts for more than (20,000) school buses, and provided (800) additional school transportation means to meet growth, expansion in tributaries, and the opening of new school buildings, at a cost of (4,800,000) million Omani riyals.

Al-Hadidi added: “To improve the school transportation process and address the challenges that affect the educational process in a way that achieves student satisfaction, the Ministry signed with Karwa Cars Company and the Oman Development Bank to replace old school transportation vehicles. (5,000) school transportation vehicles will be replaced within five years, with (1,000) transportation vehicles to be replaced during the new academic year 2024/2025.”

The Director-General stressed that the Ministry has set security and safety requirements for the new means of student transportation, which are providing automatic guidance boards at the back and around the bus to indicate when the bus has stopped while students are getting on and off, as well as providing air conditioning units, a first aid box, and automatic tracking, sensing and monitoring devices with high specifications and technologies, with the provision of a fire extinguisher in accordance with the traffic safety regulations in force according to the requirements of the Royal Oman Police. Drivers of these buses will be gradually trained in preventive driving courses in coordination with one of the specialized training institutes.

Khamis Al-Hadidi also pointed out that the Ministry continues to train school bus drivers within the preventive driving program in cooperation with the Traffic Safety Institute and the Oman Oil Development Company; in an effort to provide continuous training for bus drivers to be fully aware of the latest driving and safety practices, which contributes to creating a safe and reliable transportation environment. In the past academic year, the Ministry trained (400) drivers at the level of educational directorates in the various governorates of the Sultanate, and the training included presenting a set of topics and activities that aim to improve their skills and competencies to enhance safety and security on the road.

On the other hand, the Ministry continues during the new academic year to implement the (VIA) program project in cooperation with (Shell Oman), which was conducted in four schools during the academic year 2023/2022 and will be implemented in its current version under the name "Road Friends" in (33) schools in various governorates of the Sultanate and will target approximately (1320) students.

This program is a global road safety education program targeting students aged between 10-18 years old, with the aim of introducing them to safe road behaviors to avoid accidents, understand the concept of safe road behavior and protect themselves, through interaction and creating creative road safety messages, and creating action plans to implement road safety measures and school environments. To achieve the objectives of this program, the Ministry will implement training sessions for teachers and supervisors in the educational directorates in the governorates in cooperation with the Royal Oman Police, represented by the Traffic Safety Institutes Department, at the beginning of the first semester of the current academic year.