Morocco Faces Education Crisis: Over 430,000 Students Dropped Out in 2018, New Atlas Reveals

This Atlas uses a new approach that allows calculating dropout rates at very fine levels. It is a relevant tool that is necessary to target the deficit areas. The analysis of dropout by level of education shows that the majority of these dropouts occur in the fundamental cycle with 78.3% of the total dropouts, or about 338,000 dropouts in the two cycles of primary and middle secondary, even if the number of dropouts in primary has decreased since 2015 to stabilize in 2017 and 2018 around 126,000.

At the regional level, the analysis of the dropout rate in public education in 2018, all cycles combined, places the southern regions, the Draâ-Tafilalet region and that of Souss-Massa at the bottom of the ranking, with the lowest dropout rates (from 5.09% to 6.39%). On the other hand, the regions of Marrakech-Safi, Tanger-Tétouan-Al Hoceima, Béni Mellal-Khénifra, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra and the Oriental are the most affected by dropout in the three cycles with a rate ranging from 7.42 to 7.86%. Casablanca-Settat and Fès-Meknès are in the middle with 6.87 and 7.2% respectively, reports aujourd’hui.ma.

The analysis also revealed that unlike in some African countries, Moroccan girls fare better than boys in the secondary cycle (middle and vocational). On the other hand, girls are more exposed to dropout in primary with 3.9% against 3.4% for boys. At the end of middle and vocational cycles, it is rather the boys who record the highest dropout rates, the same source specifies.