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Rabat – October 25 marked in Rabat the launch of “Open School: Educational Alliances for Inclusion,” a project that aims to ensure the inclusion of children with disabilities in schools.
The Italian NGO OVCI la Nostra Famiglia launched the project, which will be co-financed by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS).
In partnership with the Ministry of National Education, Preschool and Sports, as well as various institutional and civil society actors in Morocco, the three-year project will offer its services in five regions: Rabat-Salé-Kenitra, Casablanca-Settat, Oriental, Souss-Massa, Tangier-Tetouan-Al Hoceima.
Open school project inaguration
The project aims to integrate 500 children with disabilities into education, in addition to equipping 25 pilot classes, as well as the mobilization of five multidisciplinary teams.
The project’s human resources will consist of 250 teachers and 25 life assistants. The project will also carry out work outside the educational framework, through the implementation of the community-based inclusive development strategy.
This strategy seeks to mobilize 50 young volunteers who will support school integration by raising awareness and accompanying the families of children with disabilities.
People with disabilities should not only be the beneficiaries of the project but also actors for it by sharing their experiences, Head of the Tunis-based regional office of AICS Andrea Senatori told Morocco World News (MWN).
Italian Ambassador to Morocco Armando Barucco echoed Senatori’s remarks, emphasizing the importance of children with disabilities’ inclusion at schools.
Speakers at Open School inauguration in Rabat
In a statement for MWN, Italy’s ambassador to Morocco Armando Barucco said that the project “aims for a better inclusion and insertion of people with disabilities in the school and in what we can call the social fabric and working fabric of Moroccan society.”
He stressed that the project is part of a “bigger effort to build a better society, more equitable, more durable and in which all members are appreciated for what they are and the contribution they give to society.”
In a press release, Alfonso Salerno, Project Manager of OVCI stressed the importance of an inclusive environment and its fundamental role in empowering youth.
“The family and the school are the first spaces of relationship with the community and they play a fundamental role in empowering today’s children who will become tomorrow’s adults,” he argued.
Inclusive education in Morocco
The Open School project is in line with Morocco’s new development model and the new roadmap for the reform of the national education (2022-2026).
Inclusive education is an approach that promotes diversity and eliminates the marginalization of school-age children. At the international level, inclusive education is taught around three systems: the specialized educational system, the integrated system, and the inclusive system.
Inauguration ceremony of Open School project in Rabat
In Morocco, these three systems are present through the specialized centers, the regular classroom, and the resource room for rehabilitation and support.
First, the centers are entities governed in most cases by NGOs. Second, the regular classroom is a structure that accommodates all the children in a given school. Finally, the rehabilitation and support resource room, formerly the integrated classroom (CLIS), is a structure specifically designed to welcome children with disabilities only.
Morocco commits through its legislative framework, various programs, projects, and the systems mentioned to inclusive and quality education.
However, access to this type of education faces several psychological, social, pedagogical, strategic, and financial challenges. Moreover, according to the most recent national survey on disability, approximately 46% of people with disabilities do not benefit from education.
A comparison between Morocco and Italy
In Italy, a fully inclusive education system was introduced in schools in the early 70s, but inclusive education was initially a spontaneous movement in the country before the implementation of a legislative framework and government action on the issue.
Italy has integrated inclusion into traditional schools by setting up support systems with dedicated teachers for students with special needs.
In Morocco, the movement for inclusion began in the 60s with the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, but most of the work was done by associations, not by governments.
It was only in the 80s that several specialized structures were created and only in the late 90s that the notes and circulars of the Ministry of National Education referred to the partial or total integration of children with disabilities in regular classes.
Until 2015, regulations affirmed an integrative approach to education in Morocco, but 2019 saw Morocco’s adoption of a national program for inclusive education, which has improved the inclusion of children with disabilities in schools.
Even if schools are inclusive in Italy, society is much less so, which is a point in common with Morocco, as both societies have a stereotypical vision of children with disabilities.
The challenge is to ensure a real dialogue and real teamwork between the different actors, like the state, civil society, the associations, the local authorities and the professionals in terms of inclusive education in order to ensure this teaching in all elementary schools.
