In Morocco, gross enrollment for pre-primary education has hovered around the fiftieth percentile for the past ten years, despite multiple attempts by the government to encourage early literacy. This has led to an unbalanced literacy chart, where adult literacy ranks around seventy percent and around fifty percent of young children remain unschooled. Beyond low enrollment, there’s the problem of unmotivated teachers, skill deficiencies, as well as shabby management of the sector. The World Bank has now stepped in to assist the North African nation, by providing it with a loan of $500 million towards accelerating developments in the early education sector.
Lauding Morocco’s strides in the sector, World Bank Maghreb Country Director Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly said, “In less than 20 years, the country has achieved universal access to education for girls and boys, a notable MDG achievement. However, learning outcomes have remained stubbornly modest. This new program intends to promote a more efficient education sector by supporting access to quality pre-primary education for all, investing in quality training for teachers and supporting a local-level approach to address education quality challenges and school-level readership.”
Between 2010 and 2013, the World Bank says it spent $160 million supporting education in Morocco. That was until it realized that these contributions failed to address gaping inequality between rural and urban enrollment, which was the point of the funding in the first place. In 2014, the net enrollment rate in rural areas was reportedly around thirty-four percent, against eighty-four percent in urban areas. In fact, the World Bank noticed a complete lack of progress on all fronts by 2011. But, since then, some things have changed. Like the boys to girls’ enrollment ratio. Which is why, perhaps, the organization feels confident about investing in the sector again, albeit with a commitment thrice as the previous one.
According to Marie-Nelly, this program, if executed faithfully, can bring about a “paradigm shift” in the Moroccan education system, while driving “its transformation,” ultimately building the country’s future human capital. Just as well. Morocco wants to achieve universal pre-primary education by 2027. Teachers are often as absent as kids are absent from school, leaving the country’s early education system in a delicate balance. On top of that, the duplicity of languages used in instructions only serves to confuse the children who actually stay in school.
This World Bank loan is heavily result-oriented. Which is why this loan will be deployed directly in doubling Morocco’s ongoing efforts at broadening access to quality pre-primary education, upgrading teachers’ skills and competencies, as well as solidifying the management of the sector.
While the move is mostly a positive one, there are genuine concerns about the country’s rising debt levels. According to Reuters, Morocco’s total public debt will eat up nearly eighty-two percent of GDP. Interest-free loans are nice, but longterm burdens on efficient budget performance. A better strategy would be to find partnerships abroad, just like Egypt did with Japan for its Tokkastu system, which manages to keep kids in school as well as relieve the country of additional future debts in education.
By Caleb Ajinomoh
