With holidays officially rolling over and back-to-school season kicking in, Morocco’s educational system is yet again in the limelight as a matter of public debate. Parents, students, and even educators are crying out for reforms to ensure quality education across all levels and in all corners of the country. While the reforms in question range from increased school capacity to high-quality teachers, one reform, in particular, stands out in the debate on education: the English language. Indeed, Moroccans, namely youth, have been extremely vocal about the urgent need for the Moroccan government to switch to English as the Kingdom’s first foreign language instead of French.
The clamor for this change is not arbitrary, in fact, it rests on solid and legitimate grounds. Moroccans deem that substituting French with English ought to open new doors of opportunity for students and graduates in an increasingly competitive global market where mastering English has become a prerequisite for your resume not to meet a sorrowful fate at the hands of HR’s paper shredding machine. Adding to the prominence of the English language in today’s time and age is not only the French language’s obsolescence when it comes to scientific research and its complicated grammar but also its ties to the tense past and present France and Morocco share.
While this debate reigned supreme on Moroccan social media for a long time now, the press conference Chakib Benmoussa, minister of National Education, Preschool, and Sports, gave on the occasion of the back-to-school season renewed Moroccans’ demands to adopt English as the primary language of instruction.
French and English as Languages of Instruction in the World
Amid this controversy surrounding the most fitting language of instruction for the Moroccan educational landscape, it is important to examine both French and English as languages of instruction globally. Starting with French, the International Organization of Francophonie states that it is estimated that the language of Victor Hugo is spoken by around 321 million people as of 2022, in fifth place trailing behind English, Mandarin, Hindi, and Spanish. As a language of instruction, French is present in North America, Europe, Africa, and Oceania. The International Organization of Francophonie reports that 93.2 million students in 36 countries are schooled in French in 2021, with the overwhelming majority located in the African continent (over 80%). While it is mentioned that learning French as a foreign language (FLE) decreased by 0.1% since 2018, the same report states that the Maghreb, alone, accounts for more than 17 million learners of FLE.
Source: French Language in the World 2022 Report (OIF)
That being said, the French language has been inching closer to its decline, namely in education and research, for decades now. During the colloquium held in Dakar on March 3 and 4, 1989, Professor Paul Germain, a French scientist and academic, declared: “We are all in agreement. We must make French a scientific and technical language; make, consolidate, because the threat of deterioration is great and should not be underestimated.” Even more relevant was the statement made by Louise Mushikiwabo, the Secretary General of the Francophonie, urging for action to be undertaken to “reverse the decline of the French language”.
In comparison to English, French is lagging far behind in all aspects considered. According to Ethnologue, the language of Shakespeare is heading the list of the most spoken languages in the world in 2022 with a whopping 1 453 000 000 billion speakers, with 1 080 000 000 billion speakers being non-native. And while Mandarin takes the lead with the highest number of native speakers worldwide, English’s global reach is incontestable.
Source: Ethnologue
As for its use as a language of instruction, English Medium Instruction (EMI) has witnessed a boom in the last decades which is “primarily fed by a desire for internationalization of the Higher Education sector or parts of the sector,” according to the British Council’s Global Mapping of English as a Medium of Instruction in Higher Education 2020 and Beyond report. Indeed, this growth of EMI implementation worldwide has accelerated in the last decades due to the indisputable predominance of the English language, both for academic and professional purposes. Another study conducted by the British Council titled Internationalization, Higher Education and the Growing Demand for English: An Investigation into the English Medium of Instruction (EMI) Movement in China and Japan stated that the initial growth of EMI programs was witnessed in Europe where it increased at High Education Institutes (HEI) by 1000% between 2001 and 2014, then it spread to the rest of the world, with countries like Japan scoring a 5% in Japanese HEIs offering EMI programs from 2008 to 2010 and China who had 132 HEIs that had been running EMI courses or program by the year 2006.
The preponderance of the English language on a global scale is an established fact. In addition to offering youth competitive employment opportunities in the global marketplace, English currently holds the reins of knowledge in all forms accessible to people. Indeed, no two can disagree that it has become indispensable for researchers, in all fields combined, to master English so as to be able to read and be read on an international scale. The table below illustrates the hegemony of English, indisputably the lingua franca of research, in comparison to French in terms of the number of journals on Web Science.
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Source: Web of Science
For digital natives, the internet has now become a vital source of education, if not the most valuable of them all. Students from all over the world have expressed a preference for the labyrinth that is the World Wide Web to get their fill of whatever topic interests them most. Even those who prefer a more traditional approach to education were left with little to no choice when the pandemic turned the world upside down. Unsurprisingly, the English language takes the lead in terms of internet users with French trailing far behind.
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Source: Internet World Stats
English as a Medium of Instruction, Soon in Morocco?
Morocco is neither blind to the global marketplace requirements nor deaf to Moroccans’ pleas to adopt English as its first foreign language, effectively replacing French. Several reforms are underway for this transition to take place, slowly but surely. Chakib Benmoussa, Minister of National Education, Preschool and Sports, declared in a press conference following the start of the 2022-2023 school year that “teaching in English is currently available in 2,200 institutions in Morocco and the number of teachers is around 9,000 teacher,” adding that this number will increase and that platforms will be used to help students and teachers to learn the language. While this discourse seems promising, the Minister was quick to recall that it is a project in the works stating that “this means that the right conditions must be created for this process to be successful and for us to maintain quality.” Abdellatif Miraoui, Minister of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Innovation, addressed this vested interest in the English language in Higher Education in a press conference following the start of the 2022-2023 academic year by announcing 10 new 100% anglophone bachelor’s degrees, 7 master’s degrees and a doctorate in medicine will be launched for the 2022-2023 academic year, in addition to new courses in English for about 12,531 students. Moreover, the Minister declared that Ph.D. candidates in Morocco will need to acquire TOEFL and DALF to prove their English and French language proficiency, respectively.
The implementation of this set of reforms was undoubtedly accelerated by the social media campaigns launched by Moroccans calling for the replacement of French with English for better opportunities. Furthermore, it is relevant to note that, against the backdrop of tense Moroccan-French bilateral relations due to visa rejections and unclear stance on the Moroccan Sahara, Moroccans pursued this transition with renewed vigor.
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There are 1.35 billion people and 67 different countries who speak english around the world, all together against "french language" pic.twitter.com/SHV9D0EcsY— 🇲🇦 Fouad 🇲🇦 (@FouadNacer6) September 17, 2021