Morocco to expand pre-school education in rural areas

23/05/2008

Morocco hopes to end the growing divide in education and opportunity between urban and rural areas. A new team at the education ministry has been tasked with making pre-school education more widely available.

By Sarah Touahri for Magharebia in Rabat – 23/05/08

[Sarah Touahri] Morocco plans to build new schools and create better educational opportunities for rural children.

The proportion of children enrolled in pre-school education programmes remains small in Morocco. Fewer than 60% of children overall aged 4 to 5 were in school during the 2006-2007 academic year, with the rate in rural areas as low as 45%. The national average for girls is even lower, at around 30%.

Nearly all of Morocco's pre-schools are privately operated: 98%, according to government figures. There are a few state schools which include nursery classes, but their numbers are very limited. Investors have established private institutions in many rich areas, but tend to leave out rural or poor areas, contributing to the divide in education and opportunity between urban and rural areas.

Latifa Abida, Secretary of State for School Education, has stressed that the situation absolutely has to change. To this end, a new team at the education ministry has been tasked with pre-school education, which the ministry has called the "bedrock of educational success".

Abida said pre-school education supports family cohesion, guarantees children better chances to flourish, and brings any developmental challenges the children may face into view at a younger age. She hopes the new plan will breathe new life into education reform.

The plan aims to offer all Moroccan children equal access to pre-school programmes by 2015. Also a priority is the inclusion of children with special needs.

The ministry intends to build 6,307 classrooms between 2009 and 2011; 5,904 of these will be in rural areas. As a related employment benefit, the initiative will also require one teacher per classroom constructed and a total of 160 new administrators. The construction budget is estimated at 1.5 billion dirhams.

Awareness campaigns will begin in 2009 across all regions, to make parents aware of the growing importance of pre-school education.

Civil society is also doing its part in education reform. Laila Meziane Benjelloun, chairperson of the BMCE Foundation, has underlined the importance of pre-school education in learning, in establishing links with other children and with adults. The foundation has set up a network of some sixty schools in rural communities. The programme, Medersat.com, was established in co-operation with the education ministry and other national and international partners. The schools are located in all 16 regions of the kingdom and employ some 300 teachers to serve more than 11,000 pupils.

However, civil society can't fix the problem alone. Marouani Salah, head of a private nursery school, said the ball is in the government's court. He explained that pre-school education was largely ignored by the state for years.

"At the present time, there is a feeling that the government wants to boost the sector by integrating more and more nursery classes into the state schools. This will certainly create competition for the private sector. But it will allow families who cannot afford it to educate their children. It will also be able to draw on the experience of the private sector," he said.

The future of pre-school education, according to teacher Mourad Batal, depends on rigorous planning and close collaboration between the private and public sectors. He said it is time to work out a strategy to develop the sector around clear objectives with precise and realistic deadlines.