Interview: A Morrocan businessman who decided to take the initiative to help the education system
Morocco, Education, 9/16/1998

BMCE Bank Chairman Othman Ben Jelloun, announced that he will be building 100 schools in his country Morocco, to alleviate some of the severe educational problems facing the nation, which has a high illiteracy rate. This comes as Morocco, through King Hassan II, has embarked upon an experiment in the area of political openness that resulted in the opposition party assuming power.

An endowed foundation will build the schools after a study is made to determine the regions and towns that are most in need, with the help of the government and NGOs (non-governmental organizations).

Mr. Brahim Ben Jelloun, Corporate Secretary General of the BMCE group, (not a relative of Chairman Othman Ben Jelloun) spoke to ArabicNews.com about this project and related issue.

AN: What was the motivation? How did this project come about?

Mr. Brahim Ben Jelloun: The chairman has always been very sensitive to this issue (education), and has participated in many conferences, and progressively the idea came to address two main issues: the environment and education. And when we thought of education, we said we are not going to address higher education because it may seem that there was commercial motivation in our action. So we asked, 'What is the national priority, and the consensus are the rural areas and women's education.'

AN: Has the business community expressed any interest in giving you a hand? Are they aware of this project?

IB: A lot of NGO's (non-governmental organizations) called and said, 'We are ready to put at your disposal all our resources'... We received some offers of building contractors who said, 'We are ready to offer our services'... The chairman received a lot of congratulations from other banks... But for the moment we will be working with NGOs and international organizations, and the Ministry of National Education, and local authorities. Before we enlarge this, we want to build the foundation to raise money.

AN: Will the schools be private or public?

IB: It will be private. We want to choose teachers from the villages and from the region, and have these schools follow the same program. We don't want to just build these schools and give them to the government.

AN: When will the project start?

IB: We expect to start in January 1999, and we will see how things are going and we will draw some lessons from that.

AN: What are some of the challenges facing the educational system as you see it?

IB: In general in Morocco, the inadequate education and more education that should exist between the higher education of university studies and the needs of the business community. This is something that is being addressed, it is better than 10 years ago, but there is room for improvement. But this is something which is concerning us as businessmen, as citizens in general.

It's certain the literacy problem is very very serious and we should have a much higher rate then what is reported in Morocco. So as citizens, that is why this foundation will address this problem of rural schools, because we need more literacy. But we as businessmen, as bankers, feel the need to see universities more in phase and more in line with the needs of the business world... in terms of management and so forth.

AN: And is this part of the problem with the high unemployment rate among university students?

IB: Absolutely. When you are competent, there is no unemployment for you. I assure you that we are sometimes eager to find a specific profile... We (tend to) find this profile in Moroccans educated abroad. But if you are well-educated, there is no unemployment problem.


AN: So what is the problem with the high rate of almost 33% of university graduates not finding a job?

IB: Unfortunately, they need, the solution will be of course internship, to make them more operational, they need to be taken and get practical studies, and be guided. It starts with knowing how to make a resume. When you receive resumes full of grammatical errors, etc,.. it starts with that. Then when you have an interview with a person, even when they are talented, it becomes evident that they need more education and more practical experience.


AN: This sounds like a criticism of the higher education system in that it is not producing the product that the business community needs

IB: Absolutely, and essentially they have suffered -- people have suffered -- from shifts of strategy, by different governments. Once they introduced Arabic in some domains (of studies), and the following years they come back to French. So you get people at the end of the day not mastering French nor Arabic (classical Arabic), and this is a big problem. Sometimes you see people who are very intelligent, but they cannot express themselves. It's a big problem.

AN: Your saying they have poor communication skills?

IB: That's right. In our area of business, it is a question of customer service, of knowing how to welcome a customer, how to communicate with other colleagues. We are selling "grey matter;" we are selling service. What you have in yourself is itself a selling element.

AN: Grey matter! That is a beautiful expression

IB: We really believe it. That is why we cannot afford to say, "Well, it does not matter, we will recycle him (the employee)"; we cannot afford that. We need a finished product. We can help of course because you cannot find perfect people, but if someone does not speak well and has a bad accent in French and writes very badly, all the efforts to upgrade his skills will cost you a lot. You prefer to recruit someone who already has those skills.

We tend to find these profiles from abroad for example. Moroccans educated in the USA or in France, Switzerland, or in Canada etc.. Lately, we are finding more and more in private universities.

AN: Do you find that the quality of private education in Morocco to be different from public education?

IB: No. It is not a panacea. But you find islands of brightness in an island of mediocrity. It is not better because it is private. Sometimes you find people who are involved in this area (education) because they have tax exemptions, etc, and they are doing education like a business. But you can be sure that the brightest people stem from the private sector educational system, or the French system which we have here in Morocco, or more and more we have even Jewish schools for example in this country, or Spanish schools, or Italian schools.

It's impressive that Morocco is having more and more private schools, but it does not mean that they are systematically better. But the best in the Moroccan educational system is not the public schools. It is private or foreign (French schools).

AN: You mentioned Jewish schools? you want to elaborate? Our readers may not be aware of this

IB: Why Jewish schools? Because we have a community of Jewish people and they have their schools. And in the last years, they have opened their schools to non-Jewish Moroccans. And you find some Moroccan families desperately seeking a good educational system and knowing that there is no hope in the public educational system and also having difficulty in accessing the French schools, because they are very selective.

They (French schools) start to select children from 3 or 4 years based on their knowledge of French as if every Moroccan should educate his children simultaneously from infancy in French.

These families have a recourse to Jewish schools for example. Of course they are not following any religious course, but they are with other Jewish people.

AN: In your view, can the government do more and should it do more in light of the high illiteracy rate.

IB: I really think that the main challenge is in illiteracy, and when you look at the Moroccan budget... almost 40 percent is dedicated to education. I don't remember the specifics, but a lot of money is dedicated to education with no results.

So the conclusion from analysts, foreign analysts, the World Bank, is that the state should devote its efforts to basic education, to the rural areas. Money is not allocated where it should be. We cannot afford to have the rate of illiteracy that we have, and continue on as if we are a normal country.

The state should devote its efforts to these areas, and then help and encourage the private sector to enlarge and involve itself seriously in the supervision of education.

AN: Do you have a sense of where this educational money is misspent? What is the problem? Is it being wasted on bad teachers?

IB: No. We have lots of people graduating in literature, and they are not good at literature. We will be more than happy to have people graduating from literature, serious literature, mastering the languages and history of literature... not these no-way (no-future) literature.

Normally, like in the American system, those educated in law get prestigious jobs, whereas in Morocco, law is a sort of parking for less bright people because they could not afford to follow studies in medical or pharmacy studies or even economics. So we have more people in economics where we should have more people in management. Lots of people in sociology, where sociology is based on very old conceptions of Marxism and so forth, because the professors have not updated their skills.

There are concrete steps to do, such as, you should pay for your studies, but at the same time, grant scholarships for those who really need it, whereas scholarships have been granted to anyone because you know somebody at the ministry, without any selection, except by nepotism sometimes, and money.

We are very confident that this government has very good intentions and that with the fact that the country is in a consensus mood, we should maybe have these schools, as these problems are very old, and maybe some solutions will come out of this... Things are moving in this country, but not as fast as you would like, but its moving

AN: That is a good note to end on. Thank you.

Previous Stories:
  Morrocan King: Education reform is crucial for the future generations and employment   (8/21/1998)
  Morocco makes progress in education, mismatch with labor market   (7/8/1998)
  Arresting Islamic students demonstrating at Casablanca University   (11/5/1997)

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