Morocco's 'broken' orientation system, a major obstacle to students' success

As Morocco’s baccalaureate students brace before the announcement of national unified high school exams, orientation and higher studies’ counseling is coming back to the forefront of Moroccan families’ minds.

Across Morocco, orientation councilors are assigned to various high schools to help students decide on their universities and higher institutes of choice, majors, and possible future careers.

However, the system seems to falter in satisfying the youth’s curiosity, limiting their possibilities and following a “bureaucratic, old school“ approach that many students and parents complain about.

Yasmine Bekkar, a 17-year-old high school student in El Jadida, is no exception. The exam was not the only thing weighing on Yasmine’s mind.

“I honestly have no idea what I am going to do next, and I feel that’s putting more pressure on me than the Baccalaureate exam itself,” she explained to Hespress EN in an interview.

“At our school, we had a [academic] counselor who came to help us, but he was always putting more focus on the students with better grades,” she complained, saying that the process “was very unclear and a bit unfair.”

The problem, it seems, is deeply structural. According to the Economic, Social, and Environmental Council (ESEC) of Morocco, a constitutional, independent, and consultative institution, the number of Moroccan students has quadrupled between 2009 and 2017.

On the other hand, the number of councilors supposed to be helping and assisting these students, notably teacher-researchers and administrative executives, has been almost stagnating during the same period. This would have resulted in varying discriminatory treatments and favoritism, between the average students and those considered “a priority.”

“Most of us don’t have a choice. It sounds dramatic but we don’t,” said Yasmine. “Most students will end up choosing what’s available or what their parents and teachers push them into. In my opinion, they weren’t given a chance to explore all their options. That’s why they are easily swayed.”

According to the American Psychological Association, bad academic orientation and lazy counseling lead, in a lot of cases, to deep dissatisfaction and demotivation, which soon enough turn into anxiety and depression.

This is explained by the fact that young people, finding themselves in a field of studies that is inadequate for who they are, will either quit or fight through at the expense of their mental and physical health.

“The issue is we’ve never had enough people to assist so many students,” pointed out Ahmed O. Ahmed has been an academic counselor since 2019 and has worked with many students over the years.

“We only work with students for a few months a year. Most of them will benefit from a lot of valuable information if they choose to attend the class sessions we organize. But we can’t tailor our support to each one of them, we have to prioritize,” said the councilor.

Aware of this underlying issue, the previous government elaborated, in 2019, its new vision for a successful academic orientation.

This new orientation system was to be based on “the early support of learners, all cycles combined, in order to ensure them a good education and allow them to improve their skills and carry out their own projects while integrating the professional life.”

“We only work with students in their last few months of high school,” explained Ahmed, “and I don’t think the system would benefit from counselors taking up all high school students, for example. It would overload it.”

Currently, students aged between 17 and 19 years old carry the heavy burden of researching higher education institutes and universities in the Kingdom, which inevitably leads to them only getting information about Morocco’s biggest, most notable facilities.

In addition, many majors remain unknown to the students, who miss out on integrating training that would fit them best, leading to unsatisfactory academic paths and, most notably, significant drop out rates.

In 2020, the dropout rate in universities neared 50%, according to the Minister of Education, Said Amzazi, an unprecedented number that is very telling of the situation students face after high school.

While many factors contribute to higher education failure, notably the language barrier in universities, one can’t help but wonder how many young people would be on school benches today if they had chosen the right academic path for them.