School: wasted time for the reform?

With the 2015-2030 strategy, followed by the Framework Law on Education of 2019, everything indicated that the time for extended consultations and diagnoses had passed, and that an action-oriented phase had to begin. To develop the 2030 vision, the Ministry of National Education held national consultations which brought together more than 100,000 participants.

Studies and surveys by various bodies, including the Higher Council for Education, followed suit. Today, the ministry is launching a new series of consultations, involving nearly 6,200 focus groups, for a new roadmap for public school reform. Minister Chakib Benmoussa denies carrying out yet another diagnosis of the field through these meetings.

However, isn’t there a risk of getting lost in meetings, conferences and reports which could ultimately prove to be not very useful, given the quantity of meetings, studies, and diagnoses already carried out?

“Education reform is first and foremost a matter for experts”, underlines a specialist in the education system, a former senior official in the sector. “If we entrust the reform to the general public, we risk having dissonant answers, and in the end not satisfying anyone. Some will want more Islamic education, others want to integrate the teaching of Chinese in schools… Participants can be educated or ignorant, with ideological convictions, political influences… It’s a dangerous game”, he warns. For our specialist, the biggest mistake would be to try to prepare a recipe for everyone. Often, solutions are decreed from the capital city for the whole system without distinction.

Each school, and even each class, has its own specificities. A diagnosis would make it possible to determine a starting point, and according to the predefined point of arrival, to draw up a work plan. The idea is to understand why a child poorly assimilates the learning he or she is supposed to accumulate during a given year, and to schedule support sessions allowing him or her to improve their fundamentals to better understand the following educational levels. The 2015-2030 strategic vision for the reform has already shown the way forward, insisting on the “institutionalization” of the school project.

The sector now has two founding documents, the 2015-2030 vision, broken down into a framework law, and the Education and Training Charter of 1999. These are documents which are rich in terms of guidance and recommendations. Now the move to action remains to be accelerated.

Ahlam NAZIH