The National Coordination of Contractual Teachers has decided to intensify its protests against Morocco’s Ministry of Education and organize a five-day national strike, from November 3-7.
Contractual teachers will also boycott meetings with pedagogical supervisors and inspectors and freeze the activities of educational clubs. They also expressed their readiness to boycott the preparation, supervision, and correction of mid-year exams.
The teachers are protesting the “illegal deductions” on their salaries, as well as the Ministry of Education’s “discrimination” against contractual teachers.
According to the teachers’ association, the ministry deducted up to MAD 1,500 ($162) per month from the salaries of contractual teachers who participated in strikes throughout 2019 and 2020.
Legal limits set the maximum deduction at 20% of the total salary. However, the National Coordination of Contractual Teachers claims that it has reached 25% in a large number of cases.
“These deductions are an intense attack on the education sector and teachers’ rights… They aim to destroy civil service jobs and transform public schools into a slave market,” the NGO said in a statement.
According to the association, the education ministry is exploiting the current crisis to pressure teachers into giving up their “rightful” demands.
The national coordination claims that the ministry’s deductions could force some teachers, who are already in difficult financial situations due to COVID-19, to stop protesting for their rights.
The deductions “are an irresponsible behavior that illustrate the institutional exploitation of the current circumstances,” the statement said.
The protests and strikes of contractual teachers in Morocco began in 2019. The teachers had several demands, but the most prominent was their integration into the public sector and the abolishment of fixed-term contracts.
Read also: Teachers’ Unions Keep Pressure on Education Ministry Through Strikes
The Moroccan government had decided in 2016 to start hiring teachers under annually-renewable contracts. A large number of contractual teachers considered the new hiring format to be “discriminatory.”
The teachers have also protested the delayed response from the Ministry of Education to some other demands, such as allowances for assignments in remote areas and a more flexible promotion policy.
