A United Nations Economic Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) report on children’s education in the Arab world showed significant disparities in access to education between wealthy and poor households in Morocco.
The report, entitled “Education in the Arab region: closing gaps to ensure that no child is left behind,” outlined troubling statistics: Only 77% of children in the poorest Moroccan households attend primary school, while 97% of children in the richest households attend primary school, a massive 20% disparity.
The report also highlighted a large urban-rural divide in access to education. 83% of children in rural areas attend primary school, versus 96% in urban areas, a significant 13% difference.
Notwithstanding these findings, ESCWA acknowledged Morocco’s progress in reducing gender-based educational disparities. From 1999 to 2013, efforts to improve girls’ access to education led to a 28% increase in their school enrollment rates.
The reasons for the wealth gap involve “overlapping socioeconomic factors,” according to the report. These include disparities in access to quality schools, educational materials, and supportive environments, a lack of infrastructure in rural areas and low-income neighborhoods, and “negative coping mechanisms” that discourage children from attending school.
The report stated that such factors often create a “cycle of disadvantage, perpetuating intergenerational poverty and widening the gap in opportunities for socioeconomic advancement.”
Countries that have successfully narrowed the gap in primary and secondary school attendance between children from the richest and poorest households over the last 30 years have done so with interventions that include: targeted outreach to families who do not send their children to school, social programs that provide financial assistance to low-income families (including cash transfers that are conditional on school attendance), investments in better infrastructure in low- income and rural areas, and lower student-to-teacher ratios in school by investing in higher salaries and in more professional development and training opportunities.
Overall, Morocco is in the top five countries in the region with a gap in the primary school attendance rate of more than 10% between the rich and the poor. The other four are Sudan, Yemen, Comorros, and Iraq, according to the report.
To address the educational gap between the poor and the wealthy, the report recommended providing conditional financial support to low-income families to facilitate sending their children to school, improving school infrastructure in impoverished and rural areas, and offering free educational resources such as textbooks.
Making such investments in access to education not only improves education, but has a “ripple effect” improving multiple areas of development and supports government policies on “enhancing social cohesion; promoting equality, including gender equality; laying the foundation for sustainable development; and ensuring that no child is left behind,” the report concluded.