Indian Schools in Oman to introduce AI courses from Class 5 onwards
These measures reflect a visionary enhancement in curriculum and infrastructure, designed to equip students and educators with future-ready skills and resources.
As part of its strategic agenda for the 2025–27 term, the board has approved the introduction of Financial Literacy and AI (Artificial Intelligence) as part of the learning framework for students from Class 5 onwards.
A comprehensive Financial Literacy programme is being rolled out across all Indian Schools in Oman from this week onwards. This initiative is designed to foster early awareness of financial principles, empowering students with the knowledge to manage personal and household finances effectively while sparking interest in finance as a professional pathway.
The AI curriculum, which will be implemented immediately after the summer break, aims to provide students with foundational exposure to machine learning, algorithms, and responsible use of AI tools—setting a precedent for technology-led education within the region.
Salman stated. 'The integration of AI into the curriculum marks a significant milestone. Our objective is not only to familiarise students with emerging technologies but also to nurture critical thinking, innovation, and digital fluency from a young age.' The Chairman, further emphasised the board's renewed commitment to infrastructure development across schools.
An infrastructural audit is currently underway to ensure equity in access to facilities for all students, regardless of location.
Major projects are in progress at Indian School Muscat (Jibroo campus), Indian School Darsait, Indian School Seeb, Indian School Sur, and Indian School Salalah, with more schools lined up for development.
In response to growing community demand, the board has also initiated feasibility studies to establish new Indian Schools in Barka and Sinaw, reaffirming its goal of expanding access to quality education in under-served regions.
Recognising that the quality of education is intrinsically linked to the capabilities of its educators, the Board has commenced a Training Needs Assessment survey among teaching staff to identify key areas for Professional Development (PD).
A structured PD roadmap will be formulated based on these insights to enhance instructional quality across the network.
In a first-of-its-kind move, this nascently formed board has also consented for the establishment of a Sports Academy under the supervision of the Sports Committee.
The academy will nurture and train students with sporting potential and ambition, offering them structured pathways to pursue careers in sports and allied fields.
Salman concluded by reiterating the board's student-centric vision: 'Every initiative taken by this board is directed towards the holistic development of our students—preparing them as global citizens, critical thinkers, and confident individuals in a rapidly evolving world.'
He called upon the parent community and all stakeholders to extend their wholehearted support in embracing and advancing these progressive changes within the Indian Schooling ecosystem in Oman.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times of Oman
8 hours ago
- Times of Oman
Pakistani community in Oman mark Independence and Minorities Day
Muscat: Indus Social Club and Latifi Sangat Oman have jointly organised a grand ceremony in Muscat on August 11, 2025, to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day and Religious Minorities Day. The programme's Chief Guest was Pakistan's Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman, Dr. Naveed Safdar Bukhari. Officials of the Embassy of Pakistan attended the programme, as well. Other prominent guests who have participated were Sayed Fayaz Ali Shah, Mian Mohammed Riaz, Haji Iqbal Haryani, Rab Dino Shar, Dr. Aftab Shah, Dr. Danish Shams Memon, Choudhry Shakoor, Raja Akhmat Hayat, Mian Muneer, Ali Ashfaq, Dr. Sharaf Attaullah, Dr. Ahmed Nawaz Hakro, Shandar Bukhari, Imran Toor, Farhan Gillani, Aftab Gillani, Kashif Zaeem, Vikram Kessani, Dr Rakesh Kumar, Dr. Devi Das, Dr. Prem Chand, Engineer Dileep Kumar, Sandeep Kumar, and from the Christian Community, Zeerash Denial, Asif David, William John and the large number of community members attended the function. The function was organised at the Park Inn Radisson Hotel in Azaiba, Muscat. The programme started with Talawat Quran Pak, Gayatri mantra, and holy prayer of Christianity, and later the Pakistan National Anthem was played. The Ambassador of Pakistan, Dr. Naveed Safdar Bukhari, Sayed Fayaz Shah Sahab, and Usman Lakhan were decorated with a Lungi gift. The welcome speech was delivered by Dileep Kumar, who emphasised the August 11, 2025, speech of Quaid-e-Azam, the Founder of the country, and he emphasised that Quaid's vision was that all the believers in the new state would be equally treated. Dr. Dileep Kumar said they are overseas Pakistanis and are a religious minority, and the majority must take care of the minority; and the same way, the religious majority must take care of the liberty and beliefs of the religious minority. The religious minorities play a key role in the development and progress of the country. He prayed and wished together we may create religious harmony and brotherhood of all beliefs and work hard for the prosperity and progress of the country. The speakers praised the role of the armed forces for their recent victory. On this occasion, Ali Ahsfaq Mangi, Dr. Sharaf Attaullah, Raja Akhmat Hayat, and, at the end, HE, the ambassador of Pakistan in Oman, Dr. Naveed Safdar Bukhari addressed the house, and he emphasised the value of independence and worked hard for the betterment of the country. He has also emphasised that all the religious minorities are equal citizens of the country, and they played a critical and crucial role in the prosperity of the country. At the end of the programme, the cake-cutting ceremony was held. The programme was hosted by Barakat Shaikh and the technical organiser, Chattan Balach. At the end of the programme, Dr. Ahmed Nawaz Hakro thanked all the guests and HE the ambassador, and the organisers. The programme organisers were Dr. Dileep Kumar, Usman Lakhan, and Asim Siddiqui arranged dinner and group photo.
Times of Oman
10 hours ago
- Times of Oman
CBO announces 76th issue of Government Development Bonds via auction
Muscat: On behalf of the Government of Sultanate of Oman, represented by the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) announced the new issue of Government Development Bonds (GDBs). The size of the new issue is OMR75 million, with green shoe option (not exceeding 15 million), with a maturity period of 5 years and will carry a coupon rate of 4.35% per annum. The issue will be open for subscription from 13 August to 19 August, 2025 while the auction will be held on Wednesday, 20 August 2025. The issue date will be on Sunday 24 August, 2025. Interest on the new bonds will be paid semiannually on 24 February and 24 August, every year until maturity date on 24 August 2030. Noteworthy, the 76th Government Development Bonds issue is offered to all investors, residents and non-residents (irrespective of their nationality). Investors may apply for these Bonds through the competitive bidding process only and may submit bids through commercial licensed banks operating in the Sultanate of Oman during the subscription period. Furthermore, investors with applications of OMR1 million and above may submit their bids directly to CBO, at their own discretion, after getting them endorsed from their banks. Notably, the Bonds are direct and unconditional obligations of the Government of Sultanate of Oman, represented by the Ministry of Finance. The Bonds can be used as collateral to obtain loans from any local commercial licensed banks and can also be traded at prevailing market rates through the Muscat Stock Exchange (MSX). The details of the Bonds allotted will be recorded in the register maintained by Muscat Clearing & Depositary Company.
Times of Oman
11 hours ago
- Times of Oman
Zoho Launches Zia LLM, and Expands AI Suite with Agents and Studio Tools
Zoho Corp., a leading global technology company, announced the launch of Zia LLM —the company's proprietary large language model, a no-code agent builder, Zia Agent Studio, over 25 deployable Zia agents, and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to open up Zoho's vast library of actions to third-party agents. 'Today's announcement emphasises Zoho's longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities because of the business context, and value," said Premanand Velumani, Associate Director, Strategic Growth Zoho MEA. "Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently." Zia LLM: Custom-Built AI for the Enterprise Zoho has successfully launched its own large language model, Zia LLM, built completely in-house by leveraging NVIDIA's AI accelerated computing platform. Trained with Zoho product use cases in mind—ranging from structured data extraction, summarisation, RAG, and code generation—Zia LLM comprises three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market. The three models allow Zoho to always optimise the right model for the right user context, striking the balance between power and resource management. This focus on right-sizing the model is an ongoing development strategy for Zoho. In the short term, Zoho will scale Zia LLM's model sizes, starting with the first set of parameter increases by the end of 2025. While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues Zoho's commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers. The model is currently testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming months. Zoho also announced two proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models for speech-to-text conversion for English and Hindi. Optimised to perform on a low computer load without compromising on accuracy, the models benchmark up to 75% better than comparable models across standard tests. Zoho will expand language support for ASR models to enable more inclusive AI adoption across diverse regions. It will also introduce a reasoning language model (RLM). Prebuilt Agents, Agent Studio and Marketplace Designed for Real-World Impact Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually baked right into its products to enable immediate adoption of agentic technology. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on the role of the user. These include Customer Service Agent for Zoho Desk that can process incoming customer requests, understand the context, and either answer directly or triage them to a human rep, providing an efficient first line of assistance. Ask Zia, Zoho's platform-wide conversational AI assistant, is bolstered with additional BI skills, tailored to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, while supporting all users within an organisation. It can build end-to-end data pipelines for engineers, analyse data, create reports and dashboards in an interactive conversation mode for analysts, or help jump start building ML models for data scientists. First announced earlier in 2025, Zoho has further simplified the Zia Agent Studio experience to be fully prompt-based (with the option to use low-code) and includes ready-made access to over 700 actions across Zoho's products. Agents built by users can be deployed autonomously, triggered by button click, with rule-based automation, or even summoned within customer conversations. At the time of deployment, an agent can be provisioned as a digital employee, maintaining the user access permission structure defined within the organisation. Admins can perform behavioural audits as well as performance and impact analyses on digital employees, ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails. Several pre-built agents are now available for users, such as Candidate Screener, which identifies and ranks the most suitable candidates for a specific job opening based on role requirements, skills, experience, and other key attributes; Deal Analyser, which can analyse deals and provide insights such as win probability, next best action, and follow-up suggestions, and Revenue Growth Specialist, which suggests opportunities for upsell and cross-sell for existing customers. These agents are available in Agent Marketplace from where customers can easily deploy them. Ecosystem partners, ISVs, and individual developers will be able to create agents and host them on the Zia Agents Marketplace in coming months. The company plans to add more skills to Ask Zia, allowing it to act as an assistant to Finance teams, Customer Support teams to start with. Support for the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol will be implemented, allowing Zia Agents to interact and collaborate with each other, as well as collaborate with agents on other platforms. Interoperability and Governance Zoho's adoption of the Model Context Protocol (MCP) allows clients to securely access and interact with workflows and actions across over 15 Zoho applications. MCP is available in early access, and integrations via Zoho Flow extend its reach to third-party tools. Zoho Analytics now also supports a local MCP server, allowing for advanced contextual AI use cases while preserving data security and compliance.
