Published on
 December 15, 2009

“After a careful study DU decided to use IELTS as a basic exit requirement for its Foundation Program students and an entrance university requirement for its academic programs. IELTS is also a requirement for admission in Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Teaching English Language. Moreover, in line with its quality assurance plan, DU will require many of its staff and students to take IELTS. This comes as a result of both recommendations of DU’s self-study and the quality audit visit by external reviewers from the Oman Accreditation Council,” he said.

Commenting further Prof. Faour said: “DU strives to achieve excellence and quality in teaching, research and community service, it uses several methods to assess students’ academic performance according to international standards. Given that the English language is the medium of instruction, the university started over a year ago applying the quality standards that were set by the Oman Accreditation Council for the Foundation Program. These standards include international standardised language tests mainly TOEFL or IELTS.”

The University of Cambridge recently approved IELTS facility at Dhofar University after doing extensive survey and on the spot verification of infrastructure available at DU. The centre will be administered by Rafa al Heyali and assisted by Safa Obaidoon. A question and answer session was also organized after the opening of the IELTS centre, which was chaired by the Vice-Chancellor. Prof. Faour, David Hopkinson, Deep Adhikari, Examinations Service Manager of Oman and Yemen of the British Council and Rafa Al Heyali answered the question raised by the audience. Presently, the centre is offering this facility only to DU students. In the near future, the services of IELTS would be available not only to the students of Dhofar but also to aspiring candidates from other regions in Oman.