THE REFORM OF THE EDUCATION SYSTEM FACING THE GOVERNANCE DILEMMA

1. SUBSTANTIAL SPENDING AND RECURRING REFORMS, FOR LIMITED RETURNS

In 2023, the State spent 90.6 billion dirhams on education, nearly 6% of GDP. This amount represents close to 12% of the State budget. By comparison, the country spends around 17.7 billion dirhams on its infrastructure and water policy and 19.5 billion on its agriculture and fisheries policy. The national education budget is growing faster than the State budget overall. In this way, to borrow economists' jargon, the State generates a positive externality, giving individuals better chances of social and professional integration and giving businesses access to a labor-force resource.

Morocco spends more on education, as a share of GDP, than many countries in its income bracket—for lesser results. International comparisons, however useful, are treacherous in this area. They often suffer from methodological weaknesses, overlooking the weight of history, differences in system structures, and behavioral factors. Nevertheless, the efficiency deficit in national education spending is real when measured by school failure, dropout rates, and graduate unemployment. Improving the performance of the education system certainly requires an increase in the funds devoted to it. But it also depends on a deep overhaul of its structures, methods, and mode of operation. In a cruel refrain, it has been said everywhere, and for a very long time, that our education system is in poor shape. Yet the system has been undergoing a reform process for more than a quarter of a century.

The National Charter for Education and Training, which, let us recall, rests on strong national consensus, made the 2000s the "Decade of Education and Training." The strategy it advocated set itself the objective, on the one hand, of increasing the efficiency of the system's services, improving its management, and ensuring an equitable distribution of provision with a view to establishing equal opportunity between environments and genders, while stepping up efforts in disadvantaged areas and targeting communities with specific needs. On the other hand, it aimed for the system to respond adequately to the human-resource needs expressed by the various sectors of the economy and society. In this way, the country aspired to reach international standards of educational quality. The record of the reform's achievements remains mixed, despite the efforts made and notwithstanding progress observed in certain areas.

The National Emergency Education Plan (2009–2011), a fairly bold initiative covering the 2009–2012 period, was designed to accelerate the reform process begun in 2000. Its guiding principle was to place the learner at the heart of the education and training system and to put all the levers of reform at the learner's service. The proposed action program addressed four key objectives: making compulsory schooling up to age 15 effective, stimulating initiative and excellence in high school and university, tackling the system's cross-cutting problems, and securing the means to succeed, this last being a determining condition. However, the fulfillment of the Emergency Program's objectives was constrained by limits in the effective absorption of resources and by institutional shortcomings in supporting the reform's implementation. It failed to resolve the system's cross-cutting problems and to stimulate initiative and excellence at the high-school and university levels.

The 2015–2030 Strategic Vision for reform, defined by the Higher Council for Education, met with strong resistance in translating its founding principles of equity and equality into concrete action and in promoting a qualitative dynamic in the development of education. Drafting the framework law on the reform of the education, training, and scientific research system struggled to define a framework and projects consistent with the imperative to reform the school, in response to strategic questions such as governance, autonomy, the functions of the school, and its role in social cohesion.

The record of this process is mixed, marked by both progress and persistent dysfunctions. The expansion of the education offer made possible quantitative gains toward the goal of compulsory schooling up to age 5 and a reduction in enrollment-rate gaps between environments and genders. Thus, with a primary enrollment rate of over 90%, the education system has moved closer to the goal of universal enrollment, and progress toward compulsory schooling up to age 15 is well underway. This expansion of education has been accompanied by a significant narrowing of enrollment-rate gaps, both between environments and between genders. Such quantitative gains were made possible by the expansion of the education offer and the net creation of thousands of teaching posts. But despite the effort made, the system still struggles to durably integrate children from isolated rural areas and children with special needs. Learners' educational paths too often lead to a certain propensity for repeating grades or dropping out: only about 50% of students complete the middle-school cycle (collège).

These rates point to a mismatch between the school and its environment, or to the poor quality of infrastructure. Among the broad thrusts of education policy, the push for universal enrollment appears the most advanced, but the internal and external returns of the education system are not improving sufficiently. As for the other thrusts, equally essential, they are slow to reach appreciable levels of performance, whether in improving quality, training human resources, pedagogical organization, or system governance. The reports of the Advisory Council have pointed, with forceful arguments, to the sources of these shortcomings (poorly allocated financial resources, weak mobilization around the school, etc.). Financial resources are poorly allocated by type of expenditure, by cycle, by region, and by track. The pedagogical model is out of step with quality standards in terms of program and curriculum content, and of teaching methods and tools.

The draft roadmap for the reform of the national education system for the 2022–2026 period aims to bring about an educational renaissance capable of giving children the proper conditions to complete their compulsory schooling and develop their skills and abilities. This roadmap is built around two long-term strategic references, embodied in Framework Law 51-17 and the New Development Model. It aims to achieve three objectives: making schooling compulsory, ensuring learning, and fostering openness. These objectives require cutting the school-dropout rate by a third and improving the quality of learning outcomes at school. This change must rest on principles of action that guarantee a framework of trust and accountability among the actors of public education, enabling sustainability and effectiveness through a systematic, participatory, results- and impact-based approach.

The roadmap also intends to focus on students' acquisition of basic learning, the establishment of quality teacher training, the renewal of pedagogical approaches and digital tools, and the modernization of schools by creating a synergy among education stakeholders (administrators, teachers, and parents). The success of this new approach depends on the mobilization of all actors to carry out the change, on their commitment to the participatory construction of the reform, and on good governance, achieved through strengthening actors' capacities.

The new education roadmap opens unprecedented prospects for a system badly in need of reform. Decision-makers are aware that mobilizing billions of dirhams would serve no purpose if it merely perpetuates the existing education system. The challenge is not only to finance education, but to reinvent the system and give it stability. Unstable governance of the system risks failing to ensure a steady direction for change, and also risks exposing the reform to disruptions in its implementation, or even to challenges to its guiding principles. Social expectations are high. Hope is mixed with doubt among families and society regarding this new reform bid. The primary school, the middle school, the high school, and the university must rediscover missions that resonate with the needs of their environment. The future of young people, and of Morocco as a whole, is at stake.

2. FAMILIES' DISTRUST, A SCHOOL MODEL TO BE REINVENTED

Families' distrust of the system is worrying. This attitude is not new—it is longstanding and persistent. The logic is clear: the system opens up to ever more people, while job opportunities stagnate. Wealthy families become willing to do anything to ensure their children get into the most prestigious programs or the best-equipped schools, which in turn close their doors to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The paradox is that, just as the system struggles to fulfill its social-integration mission, it is more than ever at the center of families' hopes. This is hardly surprising: to find work, it is better to have some training than none. Improving the school environment is also a way of easing parents' anxiety about their children's future, and of allowing those from less privileged backgrounds to have a present that lets them imagine a future for their children.

The system also remains at the heart of other social actors' demands: businesses wanting a skilled workforce, and the State wanting to instill a shared national culture; the concerns of both converge. This is what explains the consensus around the National Charter for Education and Training. Should it not give the school new momentum and ensure equal opportunity for citizens? Yet so many questions identified by the Charter more than two decades ago remain unresolved: the place of decentralization/deconcentration, the resources and role of the regional academies, the adaptation of curricula to regional specifics, questions of equality and equity, the quality of training, the prevention of school failure, pedagogical innovation, and system evaluation…

Establishing effective schooling models suited to needs and resources requires reforms whose political and social feasibility is complex. Among the accumulated deficits and delays, the most alarming is certainly the lack of language mastery and the system's difficulties in instilling citizenship values in learners. The question of languages of instruction is central to cognitive processes. The question of training content is likewise a subject whose pedagogical and political feasibility is problematic, judging by the little progress observed on this front. The language problem is glaring: a significant proportion of students lack sufficient command of classical Arabic, let alone foreign languages. The system also struggles to educate and instill the values of law, citizenship, and respect that support learners' good social integration. The issue of teacher training is emblematic of these difficulties.

In rural areas, schools should teach notions of agriculture, rational water use, and health, and should also promote local culture by developing a place-based pedagogy that draws on children's cultural references and their environment. The economy also needs an assessment of the skills required (where and how to develop trades in mechanics, the environment, paramedical fields, services, or where to find qualified craftspeople) in order to set objectives and build suitable tracks.

It has become a truism: we are entering an age of intelligence, a world in which education and qualification have become essential to the competitiveness of businesses and nations, and to individuals' employability. Today, the vast majority of jobs require mastery of formal skills acquired through specific training. This growing need to invest ever more in education is reflected in a continuous rise in overall training-related spending by public authorities.

The result: schools no longer manage to ensure social mobility or help reduce inequality. Is the education system, however, solely responsible for the difficulties encountered? No! The causes of the crisis must also be sought outside the system—in social marginalization, poverty, urban problems, and rural backwardness. These are all factors that hit it head-on. Skillfully reforming the school and spending more wisely will not resolve the problems that the crisis in our society itself creates within national education. Despite its shortcomings, the education system remains a place for acquiring norms that are not always transmitted elsewhere. In an unequal society whose social cohesion is fraying, the primary school, the middle school, the high school, and the university are institutions that still resist environmental degradation. They cannot be asked to solve all of society's problems.

3. AN EDUCATION SYSTEM IN NEED OF GOVERNANCE

Of all the system's shortcomings, that of governance is the most obvious. Despite the transfer of powers to the regional academies and universities, the system has not yet resolved complex issues such as establishing mechanisms for evaluating human resources and holding them accountable. Confusion of roles persists between what falls under the central administration and what falls to the academies, increasing the complexity of procedures between the two levels of management. Governance also suffers from the imperfect functioning of its governing bodies and from the absence of adequate steering and regulatory tools.

In the education sector, weak results—particularly regarding the quality of teaching—stem not only from a lack of resources but also, and above all, from very centralized and therefore poorly performing management. The definition of performance indicators and the establishment of a medium-term expenditure framework have marked progress in monitoring the system's performance, but they have not contributed to a real improvement in system governance. Examining performance and management indicators reveals very strong disparities between provinces, and also between urban and rural areas. The distribution of teachers is highly erratic, with very wide variation between schools in the student-teacher ratio. The same is true of continuing-education opportunities for teachers. Budget execution is very poorly deconcentrated, which does nothing to encourage actor accountability or results-based steering. The experience of the AREFs (Regional Academies of Education and Training) has not delivered all the expected results. Analysis of school assessments and exam results also shows very strong disparities between schools that cannot simply be explained by distortions in resource allocation. Thus, school time—a key variable in learning—is undermined by teacher absenteeism or by teachers' inability to handle multi-level classes.

These difficulties illustrate the challenge of properly managing schools (respecting school time, motivating and supervising teachers, social oversight, and parental involvement). Strengthening the institutional, organizational, and functional capacities of the administrations responsible for implementing national policies, from the national level down to the school level, remains a major challenge. Shortcomings in the training of teachers and education-system staff, weaknesses in incentive systems, and insufficient involvement of civil society in policy-making and school management appear more than ever as critical factors in solving these capacity problems.

In other words, the task is to transform a devalued system into an effective model placed at the center of a development project. This kind of reform requires a well-understood partnership between the State and local authorities, parents, communities, and NGOs, along with a strengthening of public-sector competencies.

Weak mobilization around the school on the part of its users and society translates into an erosion of trust in it. Yet Morocco has established a "Higher Council for Education, Training, and Scientific Research," one of whose missions is to forge compromises among the system's various stakeholders on the reform of education. It functions as a kind of "socio-professional parliament," in which the various social actors of the education system—rather than political parties—are represented. This advisory body was meant to play a role in preparing reforms, and possibly in monitoring or evaluating them. The Council has been highly active; nearly every issue has been thoroughly examined, and relevant recommendations have been formulated.

The Council's initiatives and analyses are useful in evaluating specific reforms; they offer recommendations to the system's stakeholders. Its proposals may come into conflict with the ministry's own powers, or even with the legislature's, when it comes to assessing the direction of the system's political-administrative leadership. But they are meaningful precisely because the Council brings together people of differing positions, legitimacies, and leanings, getting them to work together to help regulate a reform. Good regulation will emerge from their confrontation if it is more cooperative than conflictual. Certainly, any institutionalized forum for consultation runs the risk of becoming just another bureaucratic body. There is thus reason to think that such bodies are both necessary and perishable, and that they must therefore be regularly reinvented, to breathe new life into them and mobilize new generations.

CONCLUSION

The system's various shortcomings, as manifested in the quality of learning, the development of learners, or the school environment, would seem to stem mainly from five central issues that the education system has not yet managed to resolve: financial resources that may still be insufficient given the challenges the system faces, but which are above all poorly allocated by cycle, track, and region; a deficit of mobilization around the school on the part of its users and society as a whole, resulting in an erosion of trust in it; and a pedagogical model undermined by a mismatch with quality standards in terms of methods, content, and teaching conditions, overloaded and flawed programs and curricula, and a lack of innovative teaching tools.

Among these shortfalls in learning outcomes, the most alarming is certainly the lack of language mastery, which is penalizing both at school and later in professional and social life. The conditions under which the teaching profession is practiced—the system's weak performance, and in particular its pedagogical shortcomings—inevitably raise questions for teachers about their training and support. The crucial question of governance and steering is, in fact, the question of how to move past differences and disagreements to reach an acceptable compromise—one that is neither weak nor regressive.

These five central issues can be resolved, and the bet on a high-performing school can be won. In the ongoing negotiation among social partners over the school's recurring crisis, what matters most is not to occasionally find a "compromise" that pacifies conflicts endured over several years, but to create the proper institutional space to get all actors and stakeholders working together intensively, in order to make this complex undertaking of national education reform whose outcome has remained uncertain for years a success.