Private education: A new specification coming soon
Private education was one of the prominent issues addressed during question time in the House of Councilors last Tuesday. Indeed, the Ministry of National Education is currently preparing new specifications and model internal regulations for private schools. The goal is to improve the relationship between families and private sector schools.
According to Chakib Benmoussa, the preparation of a bill to this effect is very advanced. His ministry already had a first draft. Today, a second copy, supposed to govern this teaching by taking into account the proposals put forward, is on the table. However, to avoid confusion, the Minister wanted to be straightforward: private education is a component of the educational system and a partner whose mission is to improve the quality of the services offered because, the strategic goal of the concentration on the reform of public schools, through the 2022-2026 roadmap, aims to leave the choice to families. Above all, it is not a question of transforming private education into an alternative imposed by the situation of public education. This is an opportunity to give statistics that show the weight of this sector. Thus, private education welcomes a total of nearly 1.1 million students enrolled in 7,125 private institutions for the current school year (2020-2023). They are distributed in an unbalanced way between the regions, the cities, and the rural world, with large, medium and small institutions. This explains the disparities between tuition fees from one institution to another. The prices are set by the owners of these schools, according to the quality of the services provided and the principle of supply and demand, noted the minister.
Moreover, the law governing education in private schools does not give to the line ministry the possibility of intervening to set and regulate tuition fees. In return, the services of the ministry are concerned with ensuring transparency in relations between private schools and families, without misleading pupils and parents through announcements of the institutions mentioned. For information, the minister quoted the report on the rules of competition in private schools in Morocco. This work, carried out by the Competition Council, has shown that the freedom of prices and schooling was one of the basic pillars of competition, a freedom of prices which guarantees the diversity of the school services presented. Similarly, the ministry’s plan includes a program for the supervision and organization of private school education, with an upcoming revision of laws and regulations. The idea is to operate on the basis of a contractual system with the families which clearly sets out the commitments of the schools and the parents.
Mohamed CHAOUI
