Morocco's Higher Council for Education, UNICEF Sign Partnership, Cooperation Agreement

03 March 2023 Printable Version

Rabat - Morocco’s Higher Council for Education, Training and Scientific Research (CSEFRS) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) have signed, Friday in Rabat, a partnership and cooperation agreement to reinforce the right to education for children and youth in Morocco.

Signed by the Council President Habib El Malki and the UNICEF representative in Morocco Speciose Hakizimana, this agreement, which falls within the guidelines of the 2015-2030 strategic vision reform and the framework law 51.17 of the system of education, training and scientific research, aims to assess public policies and programs in the field of education and training.

The agreement sealed for a period of five years (2023-2027) extends the existing partnership between the CSEFRS and UNICEF since 2018 and aims at promoting the right to education, strengthening the education and training system, improving evaluation tools and methods, developing data on the education system and enhancing exchanges of international expertise and experiences through the establishment of study groups and research, in addition to organizing scientific meetings and publishing thematic reports.

It also aims to strengthen the capacity of the education system to extend quality education to the most vulnerable children and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular the fourth goal relating to access to quality education on an equal footing, and to promote lifelong learning opportunities.

To this end, a first two-year action plan 2023-2024 was adopted by the two parties and includes two priority evaluation projects on the themes of "preschool education" and "school governance".

This first action plan also provides for organizing an international seminar on the theme of "violence in schools: Manifestations, contexts and challenges", which will be an opportunity to present the results of the study on violence in schools conducted in 2022 by the CSEFRS in collaboration with UNICEF.

El Malki told MAP that the realization on the ground of the education system reform requires a number of conditions, including governance in continuing education, which must become a pedagogical model open to the world and languages.

For her part, the UNICEF representative recalled that cooperation between the Council and the UN organization has existed for several years, praising the progress made through this collaboration that has achieved major contributions, based on action and achievement in the field of education and training.