Morocco Teachers Demand Saturday Off and 18-Hour Week

Teacher working hours are back in the debate in Morocco. Members of the National Union of Education organized, on Sunday, a sit-in in front of the Ministry of National Education, Preschool Education and Sports.

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Their main demand concerns Saturday. The union is calling for this day to officially become a day of rest for all teaching staff, arguing that civil servants are supposed to work Monday to Friday.

According to the national general secretary of the UNE, making teachers work on Saturday is not based on a real necessity. He argues that the decree governing working hours in the civil service sets the working week from Monday to Friday.

A week at 18 hours

The union does not stop at Saturday. It is also calling for a reduction in weekly teaching time to 18 hours for all cycles. The protesters believe that this organization would still allow school programs to be completed.

The UNE cites the example of schools already operating with a multi-shift organization, where teachers provide 18 hours per week while making progress in programs. For the union, the current workload is therefore no longer justified.

The demonstrators also demanded the payment of the supplementary allowance to all teachers who had been excluded from it, with retroactive effect from January 1st of last year.

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According to the union, primary and lower secondary teachers, who represent a large part of the teaching staff, did not benefit from this 500 dirham allowance. A situation deemed discriminatory by the protesters, who are calling on the ministry to open a dialogue on all these demands.