Clairefontaine and UNICEF in Morocco

Clairefontaine and UNICEF in Morocco: joining forces to fight school dropout

Why Morocco?

Morocco's transition to modernity appears to be well underway:

- free elections were held in 2002 ;

- under the initiative of King Mohamed VI, some archaic and discriminatory customs have been modernized;

- equality between men and women has been instigated (New Family Code, 2003);

- the country is benefiting from economic growth.

However, there are some blots on this rosy outlook:

- it is estimated that over 600,000 Moroccan children between the ages of 7 and 14 (or 11% of children in this age group), are forced to work (these figures do not account for illegal child labor, like prostitution);

- over half these children have never been to school;

- of child workers, only 14% of boys and 8% of girls have access to a normal education.

1 in 10 children...

The Moroccan government is trying to fight this. For example in the new Labor Code the minimum age for employment has been raised from 12 to 15 years old.
However, school dropout rates remain very high.
Only one in ten Moroccan children completes their schooling.
In fact, in Morocco, parents continue to doubt the value of education.
Because they have a very short term outlook on life they remove their children from school early so that they can contribute an additional wage to the family income.

Clairefontaine's commitment

Clairefontaine therefore supports a UNICEF programme which fights school dropout.
One objective: to raise awareness in parents, teachers, administrators and local communities of the importance of school in a child's psychological and physical development.

School for the children... and for the parents!

This innovative project is based on the simple yet ambitious principle that everyone (parents, teachers, education authorities, etc.) should work together to build a quality school!).

Using a quality grid (based on criteria defined by the Convention for Children's Rights), they assess the current situation at the school and then together decide on the improvements to be made. Since parents will have taken an active part in the decision-making and helped define what a good school should provide for their children, they will be even keener to send them to school!

The parents, teachers and education officials meet in groups and then in plenary sessions where they present the assessment of the current situation and then discuss the concrete measures that will be implemented. The entire community is united around a common project and many are involved in its implementation. Everyone is responsible!

The school then becomes a community space where problems can be discussed and solutions proposed through consultation.

Examples in the field...

Thanks to use of the quality grid method, a school in a rural community in the province of Chef Chaouen, is now supplied with drinking water after responsibilities were shared between parents, the community and the school administration. For several years, everyone had been refusing to take responsibility for the problem and the decision was constantly shelved. After all parties were involved in a consultation using the quality grid, the school was finally supplied with drinking water. As a direct result of this dropout rates at this school have fallen significantly.

At another school, villagers got together and organized the construction of school buildings and a library. Thanks to this procedure, everyone is more involved and the school becomes a major community priority.

Concrete results

Use of the quality grid procedure dramatically reduces school dropout rates. In the schools involved in the project, within a year, dropout rates had fallen from 12% to less than 4%.

The project raises awareness with parents of the importance of school and education. In some cases it even resulted in the establishment of literacy classes for the mothers and pre-school programmes, which were unheard of before.

Thanks to the aid provided by Clairefontaine, UNICEF and its local partners are slowly but surely changing mentalities and enabling the focus to be placed on children.

Commitments

• Commitments
• UNICEF
• UNICEF in Morocco
• UNICEF cooperation programme