Providing Scholarships and Lodging to Increase Girls’ Junior Secondary School Enrolment in Morocco
| Authors | Type | Stream | Full Paper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joshua A. Muskin, Aziza Chbani, Abdelhak Kamime, Abdellah Adlaoui | Open call | Quality |  en |
Aim
The aim of “Promoting Girls’ Secondary School Success in Morocco via a ‘Quality’ Dormitories model” is to present Morocco’s experience in using school dormitories to increase the access of rural girls (and boys) to secondary education and, in particular, of the “Quality Girls’ Dormitory” (“DTQ” – Dar Taliba de Qualité) program. DTQ was conducted with the support of the USAID-funded Advancing Learning and Employability for a Better Future (ALEF) Project, implemented by the Academy for Educational Development (AED) from 2005 through 2009 in partnership with Entraide Nationale, an autonomous public institution affiliated with the Ministry of Social Affairs. The experience offers lessons concerning the shortcomings of operating dormitories purely to lodge and ensure the safety of students (the traditional view), highlighting instead the need for purposeful strategies to provide academic support and psychosocial enrichment to help residents succeed.
Participants
- Joshua Muskin, Academy for Educational Development, Rabat, Morocco; joshua_muskin@yahoo.com;
- Aziza Chbani, Agence pour la promotion du progrès, Rabat Morocco; chbania@app.ma;
- Abdelhak Kamime, Direction de l’Education Nonformelle, Rabat, Morocco; akamime@gmail.com;
- Abdellah Adlaoui, Entraide Nationale, Rabat, Morocco; Abdellah253@hotmail.com.
The first two presenters were responsible for the larger education project in which the DTQ strategy resided. Mr. Kamime was the lead manager and technical expert for ALEF in the development and delivery of the strategy. Mr. Adlaoui managed the involvement of the key Moroccan counterpart agency, Entraide Nationale.
Methodology
The original ALEF design demanded only that AED provide grants to about a dozen local associations to lodge 20 to 25 girls from remote rural areas to allow them to pursue junior secondary schooling. However, it quickly became evident that much more was required as the majority of the girls achieved dismal grades in their first semester. In addition, the Director of one regional education office (AREF – Académie régionale de l’éducation et de la formation) criticized ALEF’s effort as a “drop in the ocean,” challenging the project instead to help the government improve the outcomes for the over 100,000 girls and boys residing in its hundreds of dormitories.
Accepting this challenge, AED joined with Entraide Nationale, the National Federation of Charitable Associations (FNAB) and 14 “pilot” grantee associations to devise, demonstrate and validate a set of methods and approaches to foster the academic success and psychosocial enrichment of the resident girls. This involved the application of a rigorous action-research approach with a careful evaluation protocol. Basically, the AED advisors transferred the challenge to the 14 associations, enjoining (and assisting) them to devise strategies to promote actively the success of the girls in the Dar Taliba. With a core team comprising the Resident Supervisors of the 14 pilot Dar Taliba, School Inspectors and Directors, association representatives and outside resource persons, the project accompanied the associations and partners in an iterative process of proposing concrete ideas, testing these, evaluating the girls’ results and the overall experience as a group, and revising and adding new ideas to the accumulated methods. At the end of two years’ time, the group had validated a coherent set of strategies and guidelines and a protocol for their extension to new actors and their continuous improvement that the project compiled as a “DTQ Kit.” While replete with specific guidance and mechanisms, the essence of the Kit’s overarching approach is one of flexibility and constant reflection to adapt the models to the particular circumstances of each Dar Taliba, Advisor and group of girls.
Entraide Nationale took ownership of the model in 2008/09, extending it to 212 Dars Taliba and Dars Talib (for boys) in nine of Morocco’s 16 regions, reaching nearly 16,000 students. In 2009/10, Entraide Nationale added another 250 Dars Talib(a), reaching an overall total of over 24,100 students, of which 8,625 girls and 15,486 boys.
Limitations
One major limitation of the model is the availability of at least a minimum of resources to ensure a secure living setting for the girls and competent and truly caring oversight by a residential advisor. With these, the project found that most other obstacles can be managed. For example, one region where parents routinely refused to send their daughters to live in Dars Taliba ended up having to expand its residential capacity due to parents’ favorable response to the clear improvements in the quality of care provided with the new model. This reaction motivated local authorities to invest in new infrastructure, with similar decisions made in other locales. Another limitation is the more flexible approach to introducing academic and psychosocial support into the operation of Dar Taliba. The tendency of such institutions is to follow a “script,” or a set, officially sanctioned set of strategies. However, the DTQ model required that the Resident Supervisors and associations be more analytic in choosing which strategies to favor and how to apply them. Under the watchful accompaniment of the project, the associations picked up on this permanent “action-research” approach with relative ease and conviction. It is not certain that this approach will transfer effectively when DTQ becomes the official approach. This uncertainty was particularly salient in AED’s attempt in the last year of ALEF to help introduce the model to dormitories managed directly by the Ministry of Education. Indeed, in addition to the the typically creaky bureaucratic decision-making process, the dormitories revealed greater institutional difficulty in maintaining a commitment to flexibility in the model’s application, given the Ministry’s more monolithic structure. AED’s feeling was that the more eclectic approaches permitted by the use of local associations in managing the girls’ residences would be more favorable towards a more selective, adaptive and evolutionary use of the model.
Findings
The success of the pilot phase was evident in both academic and personal terms for the girls. Academically, a sizable and significant percentage of the girls in the 14 Dars Taliba attained impressive grades and stayed in school at high rates, which performance typically surpassed that of their classmates. Personally, it was widely reported that many Dar Taliba girls became student leaders and became important role models for girls in their home communities. From an institutional vantage, there resulted greater collaboration between participating associations, between the Dars Taliba and the girls’ schools and with Entraide Nationale. AED attributes this outcome to the strong participation of the associations in the design, validation and finalization of the model, cultivating a profound sense of ownership not just in the commitment to the model but in the belief that the associations had the ability and the authority to revise the model as the conditions and results dictate. The findings from the first year of true expansion will permit Entraide Nationale and the Ministry of Education to determine to what extent they are equipped to take the model, and the methods that undergird its successful application, to scale.
