Sana Al-Qowaiti-Rabat
The girl Sabah and her family live in a wait-and-see situation after a week-long suspension at her village school in the northern city of Wazzan. Sabah is studying at the preparatory level and her sisters are in open school because of the Moroccan teachers' strike.
Fatima says they do not know when the school will resume, while parents are increasingly rumored about adopting a white year or compensating for school time lost during the upcoming spring break.
This concern is shared by the Yusuf family, who is studying in the third year of preparation in the city of Tamsna on the outskirts of Rabat, because of the strike of teachers of Arabic and mathematics, which are essential for this student, who will pass the test exams in June.
His mother, Fatima, says her son comes home every day to tell her about the strike. Her parents' questions and questions from the other pupils of the school did not find any answer.
Fatima fears that these strikes will end too late, and that there is not enough time to finish the lessons accumulated by her son and his colleagues, considering what is going to be a mess in which public school students will be lost.
| A prominent security presence in the protests of professors contracting in Rabat (Al Jazeera Net) |
Burning protests
Some 52,000 professors, called "contracting professors", mostly working in small villages and towns, have been engaged in strikes, night vigils, regional and national protests three weeks ago to demand the collapse of the contracting system and their integration into the public service, If they are not integrated into the public service.
Professors say the contract system launched by the government since 2016 has made them at the mercy of fears of being fired at any moment, and in a state of fragility that they do not feel comfortable with, a situation in which it is not possible to perform the educational tasks entrusted to them to the fullest.
While the government believes that this system enabled the provision of educational staff is much more than what was achieved in the past, during four seasons have been employed 70 thousand professors compared to about 60,000 in the previous eight years.
The demands of the contracted professors were supported by the unions of education, whose associate professors were engaged in strikes lasting between two and three days a week, in opposition to the attempts of the education departments to award the professors' classes.
And dozens of students marched in some cities, demanding the return of professors to the departments, while called the National Coalition for the Defense of Public Education to a popular march next Sunday in Rabat to drop the contract law and to demand a real reform of the system of education and training.
For two years, the two-year-old professors were working reassuringly and waiting only for signals that their job was safe until the day the government decided to stop the wages of a whole regiment. She completely lost faith. |
View refused
In the opinion of the President of the National Confederation of the Association of parents of pupils Mohammed Kashani that the student is the victim and loser in the case of tension and pull in the educational system between the coordination of the professors and the unions and the government.
After stressing the need to improve the material and moral status of teachers as the backbone of the educational process, Kushani invited professors protestors to take forms of struggle other than strike work to take into account the interests of students and their rights, especially at this critical stage of the school year that is nearly completed.
In order to put an end to the tension, the government made a presentation after meeting with the more representative unions of education, in which 14 amendments were proposed, in which it renounced the system of contracting for regional employment, incorporating professors within regional education academies, as well as proposals for promotion and retirement. However, this offer was rejected by the unions and also by the coordination of the contracted professors who clung to the requirement to integrate into the public service.
In an interview with Al-Jazeera Net, Abdul-Khaleq bin Arbia, a member of the National Coordination of Teachers who was forced to contract, said that the Ministry of Education is dealing with their demands for the deaf ear policy, pointing out that they were not invited to a direct dialogue to listen to their demands before presenting their offer , And adopted the policy of pressure and threat of expulsion.
Contracting and free education
While Kashani appeared optimistic about the government offer, which he said included measures to improve the professional status of the professors, calling on them to leave the sclerosis and return to the classes, while continuing the dialogue and discussion on the proposed measures, considered by Abdul Khaliq simply "makeup" hides the fact that the contract system still exists.
He pointed out that the continuous strike on work was the last solution that the professors resorted to, after the ministry ignored their demands since last year, which they expressed through protests, strikes and limited sit-ins outside working hours.
He pointed out that they are defending the interest of the student and the future of public school because the scheme of contracting in his eyes means finishing off the free education, which is rejected by all Moroccans.
| School in a mountain village of Atlas closed because of teachers strike (Al Jazeera Net) |
Strategic choice
The prime minister Saad al-Din al-Othmani in the government council on Thursday to declare that regional recruitment is a strategic option for the government and irreversible, and has nothing to do with the retreat from the free education. "This free is a basic option for the state," he said.
He considered the continuation of the strike after reviewing the requirements of the statute on the framework of academia to ensure that these frameworks of professional stability and security of the job "has no justification but to pursue political objectives not related to the interests of professors and to confuse the public facility."
The discussion and debate on this issue moved to the social networking sites between two teams, one supporting the file of the contracted professors, directing sharp criticism of the government and how to manage the education sector and the improvisational approach it has in dealing with the public school.
The other team accuses the teachers of not taking into account the interest of the students and their demands are unrealistic because they joined the teaching wire in the framework of the terms and conditions they knew, but after the seasons of their appointment began to pressure the government in order to integrate them in the public service.