News & Event

The Ministry of Education, represented by the Measurement and Evaluation Center is implementing a training program in preparing the national tests to measure basic skills in the subjects of (Arabic, English, Mathematics, Science). The program targets (81) trainees from teachers, senior teachers, subject evaluation specialists, and supervisors from the educational directorates in the governorates of Dhofar, Al Wusta, South Al Sharqiyah, North Al Sharqiyah, and Al Buraimi.

The training program, which continues until Thursday, includes a number of working papers. The first day of the program included a session entitled: The concept of national tests, their objectives, and the difference between them and general exams. A second session discussed the mechanism for formulating the test vocabulary, and training on formulating the test vocabulary from multiple choice. On the second day of the program, two working papers were presented on difficulty levels, describing them, building a test network, using the national test network, and preparing vocabulary. The third day included a working paper that covered a number of topics, including: vocabulary review criteria, correction model, and evaluation of the test paper. The training program concludes with training the trainees on the national tests platform and entering vocabulary into the platform.

Fathia Al-Maawali, Director of the Department of Studies and Statistical Data, said: “The goal of this training program is to raise the level of awareness among teachers about the mechanism of evaluating students, and the mechanism of preparing vocabulary that measures a set of skills according to levels. Through training teachers last year, we were able to come up with a number of vocabularies, which will be used in national tests after reviewing and auditing them. One of the goals of the national tests is the digital transformation in their application, as a tender was granted to one of the companies to enter the vocabulary prepared during the training period into the question bank; to be used in subsequent training, which lasts (12) training days in the Ministry’s General Diwan, and targets evaluation specialists to review the vocabulary, and link it to the cognitive levels within the platform, while identifying the type of questions, and how to present them. The outputs of this training program are in two tests: a test that is applied in a trial version in schools; in order to get used to using the platform, and an actual test that will be applied next December.”

The training program aims to spread awareness of the importance of national tests in evaluating the educational system in the Sultanate of Oman, build technical cadres capable of preparing national test items based on the specifications published in the general framework for national tests, and create a question bank for national test items.