Mr. Fouzi LEKJAA, Minister Delegate in charge of the Budget, and Mr. Jesko Hentschel, Director of the Maghreb and Malta, Middle East and North Africa Department at the World Bank, signed, April 5th 2023 at the headquarters of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, a loan agreement relating to the additional financing of the "Support to the Education Sector" program. This meeting was held in the presence of Mr. Chakib Benmoussa, Minister of National Education, Preschool and Sports
This program aims to establish an enabling environment for the delivery of quality early childhood education services, improve teaching practices in basic education, and strengthen management and accountability capacities along the education service delivery chain. It is aligned with the New Development Model (NMD), which aims to increase the percentage of students graduating to 90%, as well as with the Ministry of National Education, Preschool and Sports' 2022-2026 strategic roadmap and the Ministry's Performance Project (PdP).
The additional funding is $250 million, which will bring total program funding to $750 million. It will also provide $12 million in technical support to help the Government of Morocco achieve the ambitious goals of the strategic roadmap.
The program is structured around three components:
1. Establish an environment conducive to the delivery of quality preschool education services through the implementation of a training program for preschool educators, the deployment of a training system for 20,000 preschool educators, and the development of a framework and implementation of tools to measure the quality of the preschool learning environment.
2. Support the improvement of teaching practices in basic education by improving models of teacher selection, recruitment, induction and deployment, consolidating a coherent, coordinated and comprehensive training model and implementing online training courses and a technology platform for knowledge sharing.
3. Strengthen management and accountability capacities along the education service delivery chain by digitizing data collected at the school level in the education management information system (MASSAR), establishing an evaluation and assessment mechanism for the implementation of school projects including guidelines, rules for monitoring and feedback, and creating an evaluation system at provincial and regional levels.
