A loan agreement relating to the additional financing of the “Support to the education sector” program was signed, Wednesday in Rabat, by the Minister Delegate in charge of the budget, Fouzi Lekjaa, and the director of the Maghreb and Malta, Middle East department. and North Africa at the World Bank, Jesko Hentschel, in the presence of the Minister of National Education, Preschool and Sports, Chakib Benmoussa.
Morocco is therefore being accompanied by the World Bank in the reform of education. Speaking at the signing ceremony of the loan agreement, Mr. Lekjaa said that this additional financing amounts to 250 million USD, which will bring the total financing of the program to 750 million USD. He also underlined the crucial importance of this agreement which aims to continue supporting the achievements of the education reform in the Kingdom, as well as to meet the challenges and issues of this reform. This additional funding will also provide technical support of USD 12 million to help Morocco achieve the ambitious objectives of the strategic roadmap. For his part, Mr. Benmoussa highlighted the importance of this loan agreement which perfectly supports, he said, the implementation of the 2022-2026 strategic roadmap of the Ministry of National Education. , preschool and sports. He added that the said program indeed aims to establish an environment conducive to the provision of quality preschool education services, improve teaching practices in basic education and strengthen management and accountability capacities along of the education service delivery chain. For his part, Mr. Hentschel noted that the agreement aims to support the Kingdom’s efforts in improving the environment and learning abilities of children. This additional funding will make it possible to focus on quality while counting on significant results on the quantitative side with “100,000 additional preschool children and 12,000 teachers”, he indicated. The said program is structured around three components: the first concerns the establishment of an enabling environment for the provision of quality preschool education services through the establishment of a training program for educators of the preschool cycle , the deployment of a training system for the benefit of 20,000 educators of the preschool cycle and the development of a framework and the implementation of tools to measure the quality of the learning environment in preschool. The second orientation concerns supporting the improvement of teaching practices in basic education by improving the models for the selection, recruitment, insertion and deployment of teachers, by consolidating a coherent, coordinated and and by setting up online training courses and a technological platform for knowledge sharing. Finally, the third orientation aims to strengthen management and accountability capacities along the education service delivery chain by digitizing the data collected at the school level in the education management information system (Massar). , by setting up an evaluation and assessment mechanism for the realization of school projects including guidelines, rules for monitoring and feedback and by creating an evaluation system at the provincial and regional levels.
Expense control
It should be noted that the signing of this agreement comes only a few days after the event organized concerning the control of expenditure in the education sector. In detail, a meeting on the Public Expenditure Review was held in the presence of representatives of the World Bank. The Minister Delegate to the Minister of Economy and Finance, in charge of the budget, Fouzi Lekjaa, then underlined the importance of ensuring that the available resources are used in such a way as to reduce the inefficiency of current expenditure in the sector. education. Mr. Lekjaa had indicated that mobilizing additional resources for education and tackling the root causes of inefficient spending require the establishment of multi-sectoral expertise bringing together ministries of education and Finance, as well as other stakeholders, including the World Bank, to help develop and implement systems for managing effective and efficient education expenditure. The aim is also to build capacity to monitor and evaluate education spending, identify financing bottlenecks and develop interventions to address them, identify the magnitude and causes of spending inefficiencies, and develop adequate diagnostic tools, he explained, noting that this is part of the expectations of this Public Expenditure Review exercise in relation to education. For his part, the director of the Maghreb and Malta department at the World Bank, Jesko S. Hentschel, highlighted the importance of the Public Expenditure Review exercise, welcoming Morocco’s commitment in the matter. He had, in this sense, noted two important points for the success of this exercise, namely the institutional framework, made up of the various departments of the Ministry of the Economy and Finance and other ministries, as well as the data, in particular those to be specific individual character. This meeting follows the High-Level Workshop organized by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in partnership with the World Bank on September 28, to discuss the budgetary challenges facing Morocco in the implementation of the New Development Model (NMD). The High-Level Workshop also aimed to explore how, through its analytical and advisory services, such as the Fiscal Review, the World Bank could support the Government of Morocco to create fiscal space for current and future reforms. The World Bank had made its choice, within the framework of the Public Expenditure Review exercise, of the water and education sectors in Morocco.