Morocco's new academic year begins with new tools and objectives

16/09/2007

Morocco rings in the new school year with new initiatives designed to increase civic knowledge and participation and to promote math and science in an effort to create "10,000 engineers".

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 16/09/2007

[Sarah Touahri] Morocco hopes to cull 10,000 engineers from among its nearly 6.5 million primary and secondary students.

Close to seven million Moroccan pupils returned to school on September 13th to kick off the 2007/2008 academic year, themed "family and school: working together to make good citizens".

Teacher Majid Abdellaoui indicated that the goal behind this year’s theme is for students to develop critical thinking, socialisation, respect for democratic values and human rights and civic activities and education, as well as to teach students about rights and responsibilities to help them become responsible involved adults.

Family participation in schooling has also taken on a new dimension. In order to give parents a greater role of the success their children's schooling, the Ministry for National Education plans to share educational concepts with them and to collect their expectations, suggestions and reactions.

According to the national education minister, the government has increased educational entitlements for the 2007/2008 academic year, particularly in state- and privately-funded pre-school education, which will see an increase of 9.5% compared with last year.

Primary enrolment is up 1.3 % over last year to 3,983,940 pupils. Lower-tier secondary (Junior High School) enrolments are up 6.4 % to 1,486,777 students and higher-tier secondary (High School) enrolments are up 9.5% to 733,555.

These increases have been made possible by a number of measures, particularly the construction of 51 new primary schools, 16 of which are in rural areas, 155 education units, 99 junior high schools of which 75 are in rural areas and 18 high schools of which four are in the countryside.

Meanwhile, curriculum managers have said that the beginning of the school year would be marked by the publication of new course books for the baccalaureate, the integration of the Amazigh language for the first time into the fifth year of primary education and the preparation of new teaching programmes for secondary education. The revision of the teaching structure is characterised by a desire to steer more pupils towards science and technology in order to meet the country's need for more engineers and technicians.

As part of the "10,000 engineers" initiative, the national education ministry introduced the mathematics B stream into technical schools this year. Preparatory courses for the grandes écoles (higher education professional schools) have also been increased with the opening of three centres in Laâyoune, El Jadida and Taza, while existing centres will be launching 13 new preparatory courses, taking enrolment from 5,691 to 7,276 this year.

Elsewhere, high schools and junior high schools, along with 75% of primary schools, will benefit from additional IT equipment, provided under the "Génie" project, to which one billion dirhams was allocated for the purchase of 104,000 computers and for the training of 230,000 professionals.

Hind Benlhabib, who leads the information systems department at the education ministry, said that with the "Génie" project being launched and run by the prime minister’s office, teaching will take a real leap forward. "The project has three components: infrastructure, teaching content available on the machines, and human resources training in the use of new technologies," she said.

A number of secondary education establishments will receive IT equipment this year, and nearly 2,000 multimedia room managers will be made available. These rooms will be set aside to train pupils in IT and information and communication sciences. They will also be used to introduce teaching staff to information technology.