“While like all other countries in the world, the Kingdom of Morocco is facing challenges in terms of quality and equity of education, the United Nations in Morocco welcomes the translation of the ambitious commitments of Morocco in the new Roadmap (2022-2026),” said the UN representation in a statement received by MAP.
This roadmap, which is broken down into three strategic areas and 12 commitments, targets students, teachers and schools in an integrated manner, and it identifies three conditions for success: improving governance, encouraging the commitment and involvement of stakeholders, and rethinking financing.
For François Reybet-Degat, acting resident coordinator of the United Nations System in Morocco, “Morocco’s development path, now oriented towards strengthening human capital, is resolutely committed to the transformation of Moroccan schools”.
“Through the mobilization of its expertise, by promoting enhanced cooperation between organizations, agencies and specialized entities of the UN and through South-South cooperation, the United Nations Development System in Morocco is determined to accompany and support the Kingdom in the implementation of this ambitious and necessary reform for the emergence of a shared and inclusive prosperity of all, leaving no one behind,” said the UN official quoted in the statement.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the flaws in education systems around the world. At the recent UN Transforming Education Summit in New York (September 16-19, 2022), more than 130 countries, including Morocco, committed to overhauling their education systems and accelerating measures to end the learning crisis. Since 2020, 147 million students worldwide have missed more than half of their face-to-face instruction. By 2021, 244 million children and youth were out of school, the statement noted, adding that the pandemic has affected the learning of more than 90 percent of the world’s children, with half of the countries cutting their education budgets.
Thus, the Transforming Education Summit focused on the invisible crisis of equity, inclusion, quality and relevance. Commitments from the international community focused on reforms and measures to address the effects of the education crisis, particularly learning loss, school dropout, mental health impact, but also on the need to build resilience to future shocks.
“The Kingdom of Morocco’s Roadmap for Education Reform is a very important component of the overall response to these challenges of our world, and of our time, in the field of education,” the statement concluded.
