More than half of children dropping out of school belong to rural areas and to communities that are already among the country’s most vulnerable.
Approximately 331,000 children in Morocco lost the basic human right of having access to education in the 2020-2021 school year, President of Zakoura Foundation, Mohammed Fikrat, said on Wednesday.
Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on child dropout in Rabat, Fikrat told Morocco World News that the high number of school dropouts results in over 1.6 million citizens who find themselves unable to properly integrate into Moroccan society.
As part of NGO-led efforts to fight against the phenomenon, Fikrat explained that his association organized Wednesday’s conference under the theme of “the fight against school dropout in Morocco.”
The conference brought together multiple stakeholders from public and private institutions at the national and international levels to share best practices and policies to adopt to keep children in schools.
According to a statement from Zakoura, more than half of children dropping out of school belong to rural areas and to communities that are already among the country’s most vulnerable.
In fact, alarming data further suggest that the dropout rate in Morocco increased by 5.3% in the 2020-2021 school year, the statement explains.
It notes that the thousands of students leaving schools each year are at a higher risk of becoming categorized as NEETs (neither in education, employment, nor training) for a longer or shorter period of time.
Being deprived of education further hampers the personal, professional, and social development of citizens in Morocco. Zakoura’s president told MWN that the country currently has over 1.6 million individuals who are categorized as NEET.
Fikrat’s alarming data and arguments echo the findings of a Recent report from Morocco’s High Commission for Planning (HCP).
In particular, the HCP report indicates that 1.5 million Moroccans are neither working, in school, nor pursuing a degree in vocational training. It also found that 73% of NEETs in Morocco are women, with nearly 41% married and 68% degree holders.
