Rabat – A joint assessment, involving Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) and other institutions, shows promising results from Morocco’s “Pioneer Schools” project, aimed at enhancing learning outcomes– particularly in languages and mathematics.
The project, initiated by the Ministry of Education, was assessed in collaboration between the Morocco Innovation and Evaluation Lab, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, the Harvard Center for International Development, as well as Saudi’s Community Jameel.
According to a statement from UM6P, the project was implemented in 626 primary schools across Morocco during the 2023-2024 academic year, making these centers of learning “pioneer schools.”
Showing a “significant impact” on student learning, the project places Morocco among the top 1% in terms of progress in learning compared to similar countries.
“The project has had significant effects on learning, with an improvement of 0.9 standard deviations across all subjects,” UM6P said in its statement.
The assessment suggests that the average student at one of these pioneer schools now performs better than approximately 82% of students in the comparison group.
The project had significant impacts within the subjects of French and mathematics, where the average student in a pioneer school now surpasses about 90% and 82% of students in the comparison group, respectively.
The assessment also shows good impact in terms of Arabic language, noting that the average student in a pioneer school exceeds approximately 69% of stents in the comparable country category.
According to the assessment report, the study used different data sources, including administrative elements from Morocco’s public primary score as well as information that measures students’ performance in Arabic, French and mathematics.
The impacts of the program are extremely significant. The assessment noted that after one year, the program “led to very large improvement in student learning.”
“We find that similarly large, positive impacts also hold for female students and for students whose learning levels were farther behind when the program launched,” the study details, noting that the outcomes are “robust” to other measures of student learning.
Commenting on the importance of the program, UM6P stated that the “Pioneer Schools” model was designed “using a multidimensional approach covering the three axes of the 2022-2026 roadmap: the student, the teacher and the school.”
The main component of the program included structured pedagogy based on students’ levels, the university added.
