Educational policies and school academic accreditation : reality of implementation

Abstract EN

The Ministry of Education (MoE) in the Sultanate of Oman has considered how best to develop and improve its schools which resulted in the issuing of ministerial decree (19/2006) that stipulates the development of new educational policies and quality assurance measures.

These changes have generated considerable debate among school principals and teachers.

Much of the debate has been about what is meant by school academic accreditation policies and school selfperformance evaluation and whether the implementation of the aforementioned has helped in improving school performance.

This study analyzes the new academic accreditation policies in the Sultanate and explores the school principals’ and their assistants’ opinion of its implementation in the area of school self-performance evaluation.

The results indicate that the policies are not fully implemented due to lack of understanding, negative attitudes to change by school staff and an overall stagnant school culture.