Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Muscat: Many families struggle to provide their children with home tuition due to the high costs involved, which can exceed OMR2,400 a year, according to parents.
In a bid to give all pupils an equal opportunity to prepare themselves for school tests, a new website is providing a more affordable alternative. Grade 12 students can now access the affordable online lessons in a first-of-its-kind e-learning experience in the Sultanate.
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For only OMR10, a student can register for an online course in one of 13 subjects available at the website. Moreover, school students and the ones under social security will get even cheaper packages.
Omani couple Mohammed Al Lawati and Ann Al Farsi, have both given up their jobs in order to be able to dedicate more time and energy to the start-up.
“We had to pay hefty sums of money to provide private tuitions for our son when he was enrolled in Class 12,” Al Lawati said, “Not every family can afford to do so. Therefore, we decided to start this initiative in order to make quality education available to all Omanis and to transform education with e-learning from the rigid and old-school teaching methods.”
For the initiative, Omtut.com has partnered with seasoned teachers of different nationalities with years of experience.
The website has plans to allow students to rate their teachers and ask questions during the examination period, through a hotline, which will be active in the near future according to Al Lawati.
Ann Al Farsi added that there are also plans to introduce practice exercises and instructional videos to elementary school grades by next year.
Inspired by the Khan Academy, a state-of-the-art online academy, which uses an adaptive technology to empower learners to study at their own pace in and outside of the classroom, Al Lawati said he aims at making education accessible to all students in the Sultanate.
The two-week old website is mobile-friendly and users can view free video tutorials before subscribing. To subscribe, Omantut.com offers only the PayPal payment method via credit and debit cards.
The couple is also utilising different platforms of social media to spread the message and advertise the website.
