Morocco’s Education Council Urges National Framework for AI in Schools

Marrakech – Morocco’s Supreme Council for Education, Training, and Scientific Research (CSEFRS) has issued a landmark recommendation calling on the government to adopt a national orientation framework regulating artificial intelligence use across the country’s education system. Adopted during the council’s 12th Assembly session on April 14, Recommendation No. 1/2026 represents the body’s first self-initiated intervention on the subject.

The 41-page document warns that while AI-driven practices are proliferating at an alarming pace within Moroccan schools and universities, institutional and pedagogical frameworks capable of governing those practices remain at a nascent stage. The council described this mismatch as a “worrying dysfunction” that risks becoming irreversible if left unaddressed.

The recommendation does not propose an action plan or claim executive authority. It instead urges public authorities to treat AI in education as a matter of urgent national interest. The council positioned the document as a set of proposals it “considers necessary to take into consideration in any public intervention in this matter.”

AI, the council noted, has moved beyond the domain of digitization. Where earlier technological shifts transformed how people access and exchange information, artificial intelligence now generates content, produces ready-made answers, and simulates cognitive functions once exclusive to humans. This distinction, the body argued, demands a shift from a logic centered on technology access to one focused on pedagogical guidance of technology use.

Data from Morocco’s National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT 2025) confirmed the trend. The findings revealed widespread and early-age adoption of digital terminals and platforms among children and adolescents, alongside increasing daily screen time and growing reliance on digital services for homework and learning activities.

Accelerating usage outpaces institutional readiness across sectors

Testimonies gathered by the council from student representatives, teachers, inspectors, and guidance counselors all pointed to the same reality. Generative AI tools have become part of everyday pedagogical practice, used for research, lesson preparation, school assignments, and text drafting.

A UNESCO report assessing Morocco’s AI readiness in education (2024) corroborated those observations, estimating that integration is proceeding at an accelerated rate against persistent limits in institutional oversight.

Sectoral initiatives across national education, higher education, and vocational training are multiplying but remain fragmented. The education ministry has launched digital infrastructure projects, teaching platforms, and data analytics programs. Universities have opened AI and data science tracks. Vocational training institutions are exploring AI-driven simulations.

Yet the council found a “structural paradox” – the simultaneous proliferation of sectoral efforts and the absence of a unifying paradigm ensuring their coherence and efficiency system-wide.

The recommendation grounded its analysis in a broad referential framework. It invoked Morocco’s constitutional guarantee of quality education for all, the Strategic Vision 2015-2030 and Framework Law 51.17, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 25 on children in digital environments, the 2024 report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, and UNESCO’s 2023 guidelines on generative AI in education.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s report, the council recalled, warned that AI’s dangers “were real and proven” and that teacher qualification constituted “an extreme necessity and not an optional choice.” UNESCO’s guidelines, meanwhile, called explicitly for transitional policies organizing current technology use while prioritizing ethics, data protection, equity, and the irreplaceable pedagogical role of the teacher.

Among the document’s most detailed sections is its analysis of cognitive and developmental risks. Unregulated AI use by young learners, the council cautioned, could weaken fundamental cognitive processes – analysis, recomposition, experimentation, and error – that must be built progressively. Error “is not to be considered a dysfunction in learning, but rather an essential stage in its construction,” the recommendation stressed.

Differentiated approaches proposed for each education level

The council proposed a tiered approach across education levels. At the primary level, the priority is “extreme protection” of learners and preservation of foundational skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The secondary level should focus on developing critical thinking, intellectual autonomy, and the capacity to evaluate AI outputs.

Higher education must address academic ethics, diploma reliability, and research integrity amid the spread of generative tools. For its part, vocational training needs to integrate digital competencies while preserving the practical and human skills essential to professional life.

This progression follows what the council termed an integrated pedagogical vision – moving from a protective logic in primary school to critical appropriation in secondary, then responsible use in knowledge production at the university and vocational levels.

On institutional architecture, the recommendation called for enshrining the state’s public responsibility over AI in education. Leaving this domain to market logic or scattered initiatives, the council warned, risks producing learning quality failures and unjustified disparities between learners and institutions. The body also recommended creating a national body to implement the framework, coordinate stakeholders, and ensure policy coherence.

The document outlined a set of foundational principles. Technology must serve humans first, with pedagogical value as the essential criterion for any AI use. The best interest of the child must guide all decisions. Teacher qualification in AI competencies constitutes a non-negotiable prerequisite. The council further suggested developing reference charters for educators defining professional and ethical rules governing responsible AI use.

Linguistic equity and digital sovereignty anchor strategic concerns

The recommendation devoted particular attention to Morocco’s linguistic and cultural context. Most generative AI systems, the council observed, were trained primarily on English-language data, with Arabic and Amazigh significantly underrepresented. This raises concerns about non-discrimination in accessing AI benefits and calls for reinforcing both official languages in digital resources and applications.

Digital sovereignty featured prominently among strategic concerns. The council warned against dependence on foreign platforms and algorithms that do not necessarily align with national educational or legal frameworks.

Mastering educational data – their production, use, and storage – now constitutes a “determining challenge,” the document asserted, requiring an integrated national system backed by clear legal provisions and adequate technological infrastructure.

On the relationship between AI integration and Morocco’s ongoing curricular reform, the council acknowledged that the pace of curriculum transformation does not match the speed of AI adoption. This transitional period demands balanced management. The body advanced immediate measures to frame current usage while embedding AI within the broader process of curricular transformation mandated by the Strategic Vision and Framework Law 51.17.

The recommendation also addressed the role of families and socio-educational spaces. AI use extends well beyond school walls, and families often lack the tools to guide children’s digital interactions. The council called for public awareness campaigns, simplified resources distributed through public media, and mobilization of parent associations, youth centers, cultural spaces, and civil society organizations.

Learners must participate as actors not passive subjects

Learner participation received dedicated treatment. The council advocated giving students a central role in developing the national reference framework, invoking Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This involvement, the body specified, should not remain a one-off consultative exercise but function as a founding principle fostering learners’ capacity to act knowingly within their digital environment.

The recommendation concluded that AI transcends a mere technical evolution. It is reconfiguring the very nature of knowledge and learning, compelling the education system to redefine its roles. The challenge, the council affirmed, “does not consist solely in regulating AI usage, but in transforming current challenges into opportunities for the future.”