Morocco Expands Rural Education: 1,000 Boarding Schools Now Operating, Says Education Minister

"15 boarding schools are built year after year," said Saaïd Amzazi, who responded to an oral question on "the conditions and services of boarding schools in educational institutions," addressed to the government by the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) in the House of Councillors. His department, he assured, has accelerated the pace of creating these establishments in view of their direct impact on limiting school dropout.

Regarding the scholarships allocated to boarding schools, the minister said that a revision of their daily value has been made due to their increase from 14 dirhams to 20 dirhams and from 7 to 10 dirhams for the partial scholarship. Similarly, the number of scholarship students has increased to around 160,000 beneficiaries, of whom 49,000 are girls. "The total cost of scholarships dedicated to boarding schools and canteens," said Saaïd Amzazi, "amounted to 1.45 billion dirhams during the current school year."

Referring to the results of an impact assessment study on social support, carried out in 2018 by the National Observatory of Human Development, the minister indicated that boarding schools contribute to the improvement, by 125%, of the access rate to the college cycle, while the socio-educational facilities improve access to the qualifying secondary cycle by 164%.