COUNTRY REPORT – MOROCCO

Chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Political context – meeting ministers in Rabat
3. Field trip – visiting a school in Fes
4. Kick-off ceremony for Africa Tour in Fes
5. Conclusion - challenges and recommendations


***************************************************************************

1. INTRODUCTION

Given its reputation as one of the most successful and economically stable countries in North Africa with a long-history of self-government, it comes as a striking paradox that Morocco’s educational system fails on many levels and its 34 million strong population is half-illiterate (only 52.3 per cent people in the country can read and write).

According to a government-commissioned survey, some 600,000 children are reported to be child labourers and 800,000 are said to be “inactive”, which means they neither attend school nor are they engaged in work.

In addition, up to 320,000 children quit school early every year to work in domestic service, agriculture, handicraft industries and other, sometimes worse forms of child labour.

Various forms of work
In Morocco’s urban areas children are engaged in various forms of work including selling cigarettes in the street, begging, shining shoes and washing cars. Many young girls coming from rural areas are hired in the cities as domestic servants. As the gap between the rich and gets wider, the more girls migrate to cities to work as domestic help.

What contributes to the child labour is the number of illiterate parents who do not see (or are unaware of) the benefits school can bring to their children and their families. As shown in practice, teaching illiterate parents how to read and write brings fruitful results including higher enrollment and attendance of children in schools.

Prevailing high unemployment rates, particularly in rural areas make people cling to old traditions and customs, including the perception of child labour as something positive, rather than harmful. It remains common in handicraft industries for small children as young as six to become apprentices and it remains a challenge for the Moroccan government to convince parents that their children would benefit more in the long run if properly educated.

Africa Tour in Morocco
The Moroccan part of the Stop Child Labour campaign’s Africa Tour 2008 was organized by SNE (Syndicat Nationale de l’Enseignement), the leading teachers union in Morocco. SNE is a founder of child labour prevention program, which has been successfully implemented in thirty schools by now.

Upon its arrival to Casablanca, the Africa Tour 2008’s delegation was briefed by Iouy Aziz, SNE Secretary General, on the union’s child labour prevention program. He explained their strategy of putting pressure upon the government to get involved more actively in this field. The briefing-complemented by additional input from member of SNE’s national committee and the Africa Tour delegation Driss El Youbi, -proved to be extremely useful during the meetings with the ministers of education and of employment and vocational training in Rabat.

Secundary school enrollment
Unlike many other African countries, Morocco on the whole does not seem to face the risk of low school enrollment at primary level as much as it does at second level where high rates of drop-out constitute a major problem.

According to the UNICEF survey conducted in 2006 the enrollment rate at primary level is approximately 98 percent for boys and 87 percent for girls, while second level enrollment is 38 percent of boys and 33 percent of girls.

Education is free in Morocco and compulsory through primary school (age 15).


2. POLITICAL CONTEXT – MEETING MINISTERS IN RABAT

In general, it can be said that the political will to tackle the twin issue of child labour and poor educational standards (as evidenced by high drop-out rates as well as high levels of illiteracy) seems to be in place in Morocco.
The delegation met with the Minister of Employment and Vocational Training, Mr. Jamal Aghmani and the Minister for Education Mr. Mohammed Akchichan. Both Ministers acknowledged the graveness of the existing problems as well as a readiness to tackle it.

Meeting with Minister of Employment and Vocational training, Mr. Jamal Aghmani

During a roundtable session, Minister Aghmani presented the delegation with an outline of the recently adopted National Action Plan. The plan includes the hiring of “labour inspectors” to ensure that the ban on child labour-already in existence-is respected. A total of 43 inspectors have already been trained on issues concerning child labour.

Minister Aghmani also acknowledged the specific problem of a wide-spread use of under-age domestic workers. This form of child labour is more difficult to monitor and uproot than child labour in other industries such as the handicrafts industry.

He also stressed the importance of achieving a better functioning education system, this is key to keeping the children in schools and out of the labour market.

“What I would like to emphasize is that there is the political will in the government, the political parties and civil society. There is general consensus that everybody should contribute and work together in order to eradicate child labour. Morocco’s Ministry of Employment was one of the first Arab and African countries to conduct child labour research in 2000 and we were not ashamed to openly declare that there are 600,000 children who work in the country. We will conduct national research in 2009 and we really believe that the number has been reduced. But of course, it should be combined with quality education because education plays a very important role in reducing the child labour,” he said in an interview, recorded for the purposes of the SCL campaign’s Africa Tour.


Minister Jamal Aghmani holding the National Action Plan booklet

Meeting with Minister of Education, Mr. Mohammed Akchichan

For his part, Minister Akchichan, did not try to hide the failures of the Moroccan education system, but seemed convinced the negative trend can be turned around, especially if the necessary funding comes through, as envisioned in the latest state budget draft and the National Action Plan.

“In the last 15 years schools did not have the necessary resources. But now there is a collective political will to work together to find the necessary resources to allow the schools to play the role they should,” Mr. Akchichan remarked.

The Minister also dismissed concerns that have been raised about the government’s attempts to promote private education. He made it clear that the state is not trying to delegate its responsibilities for providing the compulsory education to children of up to 15 years of age to a private sector. However, he believes that private institutions do have a role to play in assisting the government to build the capacity of the public school system.

Mr. Akchichan had words of praise for the work of SNE, calling the teacher’s union a reliable partner in the improvement of the Moroccan education system. He did acknowledge there had initially been skepticism about the union’s role in the reform program among people who perceive the union’s role in a rather traditional way, but he said this was eventually overcome by the positive results SNE had in Fes. He also expressed hope that the union will remain a “suggestive force, inventive in its ways of working and coming up with new ideas that will convince not only the government but the society as a whole to work with the union”.

He showed a keen interest in the SCL Campaign’s Africa Tour, hoping to hear about the experience and findings it will have generated by the time it comes to an end. He also proved to be very responsive to an offer of further cooperation with India´s MV Foundation, represented in the delegation by Venkat Reddy, and seemed to be generally interested in the concept of child labour free zones applied by the organisation in India.


Minister Mohammed Akhchichan engaged in a discussion with the delegation


3. FIELD TRIP - VISITING A SCHOOL IN FES

The Al Quds primary school in Fes, about 200 km southwest of Rabat, can be clearly taken as a success story. The headmaster of the school, program leader/treasurer and head of the parents´ association informed the delegation about the program which has been implemented in cooperation with AOB from Holland and the Ministry of Education in Morocco since 2003

Thanks to this program the relatively high average drop-out of 53 children a year in Al Quds School has been reduced to only 3 pupils a year. The school has 1,056 students.
The school also carried out research on the state of their pupils’ health. The findings showed that some students had stopped attending school simply because their vision was impaired (i.e. they could not read what was written on blackboards). Since then, the school has been providing about 50 pairs of glasses per year, which has widely contributed to the fall in the drop-out rate.

The school also runs a variety of extra-curricular activities such as arts & crafts with the help of local NGO volunteers. As a result, pupils’ mothers have also offered to run similar workshops on traditional knitting and weaving.
Upon the implementation of SNE´s child labour prevention program, the school management team had to start from scratch and first deal with the insufficient sanitary conditions and basic jobs such as painting the walls to make school a more hygienic and safe place for the pupils.

The delegation got a chance to experience the improvements to the school by attending a French lesson and some of the extra-curricular activity workshops mentioned above. The children were evidently enjoying their lessons. When asked about their future, many of them-like many young children- said their ambition was to become a teacher one day.


A local NGO volunteer holding one of the extra-curricular activity lessons

The school has also been trying to address the problem of illiteracy among parents, providing lessons of reading and writing in the evenings. The lessons-run by members of the Parents-Teachers Association-have taught 90 parents out of 300 so far.

The school takes pride in the fact that it faces a much higher demand than other schools in the region. In September 2008 the school registered 241 enrollments, while a school nearby of the same size reported only 42. Nonetheless, the Al Quds School realizes the limited capacity the trade union has in replicating the model across the country. For this to be possible, the government would have to take the initiative. For the time being, the program has expanded from the initial five schools to a total of ten schools in the Fes region Fes and twenty other schools in four other regions of Morocco.

4. KICK-OFF CEREMONY FOR AFRICA TOUR IN FES

Last on the agenda of the tour’s stop in Fes was an official kick-off ceremony for the Africa Tour. This helped to spread the message of the SCL campaign to a wider audience through the local media outlets covering the event, and also provided a symbolic campaigning point for the local partners who have been involved in the successful program of school drop-out prevention schemes and are clearly ready to take their efforts to another level.

The event-held at one of the local schools-brought together regional heads of the department of education, school headmasters, teachers and inspectors as well parents’ association representatives, all the program coordinators from participating schools. A representative from the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training addressed a gathering of this kind for the first time, declaring the readiness of the ministry to work hand in hand on fighting the child labour.


The delegation and SNE Vice-President Abdelaziz Mountassir


Handicrafts Industry

At the kick off ceremony, the Ministry of Handicraft Industries was represented. Their presence had a special meaning in the city known for its handicrafts as well as for the incidence of child labour in the industry.
There is a strongly rooted popular belief in Morocco that children must start their craftsman apprenticeship before the age of 12 if they want to master the necessary skills.

Unfortunately, due to the last minute revisions of the tour’s program in Morocco it was impossible to visit one of the local handicrafts centers in Fes, as originally planned, to assess the situation and speak with the people who are directly involved.

SNE-MVF mutual inspiration as an example of South-South exchange

Sociologist and trade union activist Ahmed Bouziane, who serves as the advisor for the SNE-sponsored program of school drop-out prevention-in his speech to the gathering-reminisced about his personal experience with the MV Foundation’s work in India and the lessons he and his fellow activists learned at the Hyderabad conference in 2003.

He called for even greater dedication to the cause on the part of people in Morocco and urged them to call for absolute rejection of child labour and the right to education for all children. He claimed “there are few people who are really convinced that the child labour is a very bad thing; in the mind of a great part of the population – and also a great part of those responsible, on every level – it is not so clear that child labour is a real problem”.

Mr. Bouziane also called on the trade unions to maintain pressure on the government for – as he said - it is primarily the state’s role to cure the ills of its education systems and it would be unacceptable to let the government shift the responsibility to other stakeholders.

The Africa Tour delegation’s designated spokesman Venkat Reddy officially ended the kick-off ceremony. He declared himself proud of SNE and its achievements since 2003 when he last visited Morocco. He promised to bring the special contribution which came from the Moroccan teachers back to India, where the campaign against child labour still faces an uphill struggle despite all of the achievements attributable to MVF and its partners.

By ending his speech with a call (in Arabic) to make all of Fes a child labour free zone - which the increasingly enthusiastic audience then repeated aloud together with him - Venkat sowed the seeds of a new community-based approach for tackling the child labour problem, which some people have already shown interest in applying.


5. CONCLUSION – CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Challenges:

• Social problems, such as divorce, poverty, unemployment and illiteracy of the parents were perceived by the school management and the parents associations as the biggest obstacle

• Hygiene in schools – unsanitary conditions are seen as one of the reasons children, especially young girls may drop out

• Health problems such as visual impairment also contribute to the drop-out rate.

• Insufficient training of teachers – teachers often refuse to attend upgrade training session which are allegedly run by “old-fashioned” school inspectors or former teachers/trainees.

• Internalizing the principles of the prevention program among the teachers

• Narrowing the gap in the quality of education in public and private schools (it is a sad confirmation of the unacceptable reality that even a senior representative of SNE prefers sending his children to private schools)

• Changing traditional attitudes and social norms vis-à-vis child labour, involving the communities where the problem remains deeply rooted e.g. the handicraft industry.

Recommendations:

• The SNE must submit a proposal to urge the Ministry of Education to replicate their child labour prevention program.

• The government should take more responsibility for the child labour problem and replicate SNE’s successful child labour prevention program at a national level, particularly addressing school capacity building which the teachers’ union cannot provide. Funds should be allocated from the National Action Plan budget for the program (for example supporting the reinforcement lessons for slow learners)

• The government & civil society need to work together to make schools more child-friendly, improve sanitary conditions and provide more extra-curricular activities like sports etc.

• The government & civil society need to work together to increase efforts to improve literacy among parents.

• Considering application of the area-based, community-driven approach as championed by MV Foundation in India to complement the achievements of the teachers’ union and its partners

• There needs to be more involvement from the employers of child labourers in all processes by for example introducing the label “Child labour free product”, providing incentives for employers to hire adults instead of children or setting up a peer monitoring system.