Morocco’s Education Crisis: 66% of Children Can’t Read After Primary School

In basic school education, all fundamental skills are important. Thus, a child’s reading performance is an easily understandable measure of learning.

In reality, reading is the bridge that allows the student to learn effectively in all other areas. From this starting point, the World Bank’s new synthetic indicator, called "learning poverty," allows the assessment of children’s reading proficiency (MPL). Thus, according to the World Bank, "being in learning poverty means being unable to read and understand a short, age-appropriate text by age 10."

According to Medias24, in the note devoted to "learning poverty" attributed to Morocco and published last October, 64% of children in the kingdom have a performance below the required minimum. Indeed, according to Morocco’s results, 66% of children at the end of primary school are not competent in reading. Also, it should be noted that 5% of children of primary school age are not enrolled.

Furthermore, large-scale student learning assessments in Morocco indicate that 64% do not reach the MPL by the end of primary school. In conclusion, Morocco’s "learning poverty" is 2.5 percentage points higher than the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) average and 10.7% higher than that of lower-middle-income countries.

These are unfortunately rather unflattering results that are nevertheless justified. Indeed, according to the same source, spending on primary education per child who has reached primary school age is $1,624 (in purchasing power parity), 70.7% less than the Middle East and North Africa average and 95.1% more than the average for lower-middle-income countries.

According to the World Bank, "Eliminating learning poverty is as urgent as eliminating extreme monetary poverty, stunting, or hunger." The project aims, in fact, "to strengthen human capital, notably by accelerating better investments in human resources," the same source indicates.