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Education in Morocco

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© Amina Lahbabi
Amina Lahbabi · CC-BY-SA-3.0

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School attendance is compulsory up to the age of 13. About 56% of young people are enrolled in secondary education, and 11% are in higher education. The government has launched several policy reviews to improve quality and access to education, and in particular to tackle a continuing problem of illiteracy. Support has been obtained from a number of international organisation such as USAID, UNICEF and the World Bank. A recent report after the new government being formed in 2017 has made Arabic as well as French Compulsory in Public School.

History

Islamic

In the year 859, Fatima al-Fihri established Al-Qarawiyiin mosque in Fes, and its associated madrasa is considered by some institutions such as UNESCO and Guinness World Records to be the oldest existing, continually operating higher educational institution in the world. The Moroccan historian Mohamed Jabroun (محمد جبرون) wrote that schools in Morocco were first built under the Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269). For centuries, public education in Morocco took place primarily in madrasas and kuttabs (كُتَّاب)—or as they were called in Morocco, msids (مسيد). Education at the msid was Islamic and delivered in Arabic. In addition to teaching Quranic exegesis (tafseer) and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), Islamic schools often taught a wide variety of subjects, including literature, science and history. The Marinids founded a number of these schools, including those in Fes, Meknes, and Salé, while the Saadis expanded the Ben Youssef Madrasa in Marrakesh.

Jewish

In the aftermath of the sacking of the mellah of Tetuan in the Hispano-Moroccan War, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French organization working to empower Jews around the world through a French education, founded its first school in Tetuan in 1862, followed by schools in Tangier (1864), Essaouira (1866), and Asfi (1867), eventually reaching a total of 83 schools—more than all of the AIU's schools in the rest of the world.

Before the French Protectorate, Jewish girls' schools were teaching reading and writing, as well as vocational workplace training through skills such as tailoring and laundering, and later reading, writing, and shorthand. In 1913, the French authorities replicated this system for Muslim girls in Salé and later other cities.

French Protectorate

Following the Treaty of Fes of 1912 and the establishment of the French Protectorate, France established public schools in which education was delivered in French.

Protectorate officials were hesitant about education for general public, afraid that an educated populace would become a source of opposition to the colonial regime. Resident General Hubert Lyautey's elitism shaped the educational system under the French Protectorate, and access to a modern education depended on a student's ethnicity and class, with separate educational opportunities for Europeans, Jews, and Muslims. Only a percentage of the children attending school were Muslim, and of these, most attended the traditional Quranic schools, or msids, which were beyond the purview of the Protectorate. Most Muslim students studying within the Protectorate's educational system received a vocational education to work in various manual trades.

Five schools for the "sons of notables" were established after 1916 for boys from elite Moroccan families. There were also two collèges founded in Fes (1914) and Rabat (1916). These boarding schools, which Susan Gilson Miller likens to Eton College, served to create Lyautey's vision for a class of bicultural Moroccan "gentlemen"—imbued with traditional ideals yet efficient in navigating modern bureaucratic systems—to fill roles in the country's administration.

In 1920, Lyautey founded the Institut des Hautes Études Marocaines, located within the Bibliothèque Générale next to the colonial headquarters in Rabat, for colonial administrators who wanted to learn more about Moroccan history and society.

After 1920, French instituteurs, who were rigorously prepared in an Amazigh dialect and trained as teachers and intelligence gatherers, were assigned to schools in rural areas for speakers of Amazigh languages. The Collège d'Azrou, one of these schools that was developed into a collège, was one of the instruments for the implementation of a Berber Dhahīr and to "help form an Amazigh elite that would help France implement its divide and rule policies." It trained its Amazigh students for high roles in the colonial administration, as well as forming "a Berber elite steeped in French culture, in an environment where Arabic influences were rigorously excluded." This hierarchical educational system was designed to "guarantee an indigenous elite loyal to France and ready to enter its service," though its permeability in practice made it a "vehicle of social mobility."

The inadequacies of traditional education at the msid became apparent, and private Moroccan citizens, particularly of the bourgeois merchant class, started to found what would later become known as "free schools"—with modernized curricula and instruction in Arabic—independently of each other. The teaching quality at these free schools varied greatly, from "uninspiring fqîhs, scarcely removed from their msîds" to "the country's most distinguished and imaginative 'ulamâ." Many of the young teachers in Fes were simultaneously taking classes at al-Qarawiyyin University, and several would go on to lead the Moroccan Nationalist Movement.

Independence

In the 44-year period of the French Protectorate, a total of only 1415 Moroccans had earned baccalaureate diplomas, 640 of whom were Muslims and 775 of whom were Jews. Additionally, under the Protectorate, only 15% of school-age children were in school. It was necessary to develop the educational system and a university network out of the limited resources left by the French in order to face the challenges awaiting the newly independent nation-state, such as "creating and consolidating state institutions, building a national economy, organizing civil society and the nascent political parties, [and] establishing social protections for a needy population."

Arabization became an imperative. Ahmed Boukmakh published Iqra' (اِقْرَأ, "Read"), the first series of Arabic textbooks in Morocco, in 1956, 1957, and 1958. In 1957, Muhammad Al-Fasi attempted to Arabize first grade, but this attempt was not successful. The Institute for Studies and Research on Arabization was established in 1960 and the first Congress of Arabization was held in Rabat in 1961.

The Cultural Agreement of 1957, signed by the Moroccan and French governments, allowed for the continuation of French education in Morocco administered by a body known as the (which was replaced by AEFE in 1990).

In 1958, Muhammad al-Fasi's successor, established a blueprint for education reform in four goals:

  1. unify the traditional and modern systems
  2. Arabize all subjects
  3. generalize literacy
  4. Moroccanize, i.e. train nationals to replace foreign teachers

It was in 1963 that education was made compulsory for all Moroccan children between the ages of 6 through 13 and during this time all subjects were Arabized in the first and second grades, while French was maintained as the language of instruction of maths and science in both primary and secondary levels.

In 1965, demanding the right to public higher education for Moroccans, the National Union of Moroccan Students (الاتحاد الوطني لطلبة المغرب, UNEM) organized a march starting from Muhammad V Secondary School in Casablanca, which devolved the following day into the 1965 Moroccan riots. King Hassan II blamed the events on teachers and parents, and declared: "Allow me to tell you that there is no greater danger to the State than a pseudo-intellectual, and you are pseudo-intellectuals. It would have been better if you were all illiterate.” In the aftermath, teachers were persecuted.

Under Hassan II, the Institute of Sociology (معهد السوسيولوجيا) run by Abdelkebir Khatibi was dissolved in 1970. In 1973, the humanities at government-controlled universities were Arabized, in which the Istiqlal leader Allal al-Fassi played a major role, and curricula were substantially changed. Arabization was instrumentalized to suppress critical thought, a move which Dr. Susan Gilson Miller described as a "crude and obvious attempt to foster a more conservative atmosphere within academia and to dampen enthusiasm for the radicalizing influences filtering in from Europe." The Minister of Education Azzeddine Laraki, following a report conducted by a committee of four Egyptians including two from al-Azhar University, replaced sociology with Islamic thought in 1983.

To meet the rising demand for secondary education in the 1970s, Morocco imported French speaking teachers from countries such as France, Romania, and Bulgaria to teach maths and sciences, and Arab teachers to teach humanities and social studies.

A 1973 article in Lamalif described Moroccan society as broken and fragmented, with misdirected energy from a discouraged and ashamed elite contributing to low standards of education.

By 1989, Arabization of all subjects across all grades in both primary and secondary public education was accomplished. However, French remained the medium of instruction for scientific subjects in technical and professional secondary schools, technical institutes and universities.

The government has undertaken several reforms to improve the access of education and reduce regional differences in the provision of education. In 1999, King Mohammed VI announced the National Charter for Education and Training (الميثاق الوطني للتربية و التكوين). In the same year, a committee for education was established with the goal of reforming the educational system in Morocco. On July 15, 2002, decree number 2.02.382 established the Ministry of National Education, Early Education, and Athletics.

The King announced the period between 1999 and 2009 as the "Education Decade." During this time the government's reform initiative focused on five main themes to facilitate the role of knowledge in economic development; the key themes were education, governance, private sector development, e-commerce and access. The World Bank and other multilateral agencies have helped Morocco to improve the basic education system.

Under Said Amzazi, Morocco passed the framework-law 51.17 summer 2019.

French schools

To this day, French schools—which are colloquially referred to as "la mission," whether they're actually related to the Mission Laïque Française or not—still have a major presence in Morocco. In these schools, French is the language of instruction, and Arabic is only taught as a second language if at all.

The schools are certified by the Agency for French Education Abroad, and administered by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the student body is typically composed of the children of Morocco's elite and well-to-do classes. These schools, such as Lycée Lyautey in Casablanca, are typically located in big cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, Fes, Marrakesh, Meknes, and Oujda.

France is the number 1 destination for Moroccan students leaving the country to study abroad, receiving 57.7% of all Moroccans studying outside of Morocco. Moroccan students also represent the largest group of foreign students in France, at 11.7% of all international students at universities in France, according to a 2015 UNESCO study.

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