Morocco’s Education Spending Increases By 10% In 2023, Reaches $6 Billion

Rabat – Education spending in Morocco for the upcoming year is set to total MAD 69 billion ($6.2 billion) under the country’s recently adopted state budget for 2023.

The education budget in 2023 marks an annual increase of about 10% from the previous year’s MAD 62.5 billion (equivalent to $6.8 billion at the time), Morocco’s Finance and Economy Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui, said while presenting the 2023 draft budget bill yesterday in parliament.

During her presentation, Fettah Alaoui detailed the main education sub-sectors that would see a rise in spending. As preschooling becomes a focal point of the government’s rhetoric on education reforms, the minister first revealed that the state is allocating MAD 2 billion ($181.5 million) in 2023 to expand access to preschool in Morocco.

The 2023 state budget is equally set to allocate MAD 1.8 billion ($163.4 million) to boost access to free housing and meals for disadvantaged students.

To address the shortage of teachers, the minister said that 20,000 new teachers would be recruited in 2023, adding that the government is allocating MAD 4 billion ($163.4 billion) for their training.

In addition to spending on human resources and preschooling, the 2023 state budget is set to fund the construction of 224 new schools and renovate1746 others.

Education and preschooling in Morocco

Reforming Morocco’s education enterprise has been at the center of political rhetoric since the start of the 21st century to no avail.

Adult illiteracy rates in Morocco, a measure tracking the percentage of adults (aged 15 and above) incapable of reading, writing, and understanding short simple sentences stood at almost 27%, according to some estimates.

While there has been some notable progress over the years to expand access to education, converging reports show that public schooling in Morocco leaves much to be desired. One report claims that most Moroccan secondary school students “do not deserve to pass.”

In terms of preschooling, data shows that as of 2018 only half of Moroccan students have access to preschool education, the rate drops to less than a third in rural areas.

In 2020, the country made preschooling mandatory for all students and announced measures to expand access to it.

However, recent studies from the World Bank reveal that preschooling in Morocco remains suboptimal at best due to lack of proper teacher training among other issues.