Private schools in Morocco… Ambiguity in registration and insurance amounts

A. Latif Baraka – Heba Press

Many private educational institutions resort to pursuing the policy of ambiguity by including data related to student insurance in particular, as well as registration fees at the beginning of the school year, by grouping them into financial amounts between 800 dirhams and 1,500 dirhams depending on each institution, and the fact is that the insurance premium of insurance institutions does not exceed 14 dirhams per year for each student, and in the most extreme cases it is 60 dirhams. This covers medical expenses up to 500 dirhams in the event of a school accident requiring insurance. It should be noted that the price of private education in different regions of Morocco ranges from 800 dirhams to 2,500 dirhams per month.

Reports completed by the guardianship authorities revealed that most of the heads of institutions save as much as possible on the amount of insured accidents, do not inform the parents of students about the requirements of their children’s insurance contracts and do not even publish their prices. Some reports indicate that “some institutions evade insurance for all students, even if they deducted the costs from the registration fees at the beginning of the school year, which violates the requirements of the law.” These reports also depend on the non-delivery of invoices and insurance statements to the parents and guardians of students, and the situation is that the insurance is provided by the institutions and not by the guardians.

These reports also indicate the conditional sale of certain services provided in some educational institutions, such as linking the teaching of a subject to the compulsory purchase of its course from the same institution. The report highlights the absence of a “director” institution in some institutions, or it is sometimes directed by people who do not meet the required legal training requirements, despite the correspondence addressed to them by the academies, adding that there is a fictitious appointment of some directors, combining teaching profession and administration in order to circumvent the texts regulating the field of private education.