This royal symbolic gesture testifies to HM the King's strong and determined commitment to reinforcing the educational system and strengthening the sector of vocational training, which are deemed as a basis for development and a key for openness and social promotion.
It is in line with the strategic vision to reform Moroccan schools (2015-2030) which is aimed at building a school that meets the expectations and ambitions of Moroccans, a new school of equal chances, quality for all, integration and social progress.
The One Million School Bag initiative, which was launched in 2008 and renewed yearly ever since, falls within the framework of efforts to reform and generalize basic education.
Worth around 390 million dirhams, this initiative, to be run this year by bodies of territorial governance under the National Initiative for Human Development (INDH), involves all Moroccan provinces and prefectures, benefits students in elementary and secondary schools, and gives priority to the rural zone (64%). It is part of a solidarity-based approach and is meant primarily to ensure equal chances for education and fight school dropout.
This operation, worth over 2.149 million dirhams, is an integral part of the nation-wide strategy to support schooled children and their families. This strategy also provides for a program that supports poor families dubbed "Tayssir" (777 million dirhams) -a financial assistance granted on the condition of schooling the kids of the beneficiaries- as well as the programs of improving services of school meals and boarding schools (948 mln MAD) and of school transportation (34 mln MAD).
On this occasion, HM the King visited classrooms of the Moulay Youssef school and handed, symbolically, school bags and manuals to ten pupils from the Moulay Youssef school and ten students from Al Aouama secondary school in the Al Aouama commune (Tangiers-Assilah prefecture).
HM the King posed afterwards for a souvenir photo with teachers and administrative executives of the same school.
The sovereign also handed eight minibuses of school transportation for the benefit of associations of students' parents in the rural communes of the Tangiers-Assilah prefecture.
The total number of students enrolled this new academic year in public and private schools (elementary, secondary and high schools) is 6,951,351 pupils, including 2,722,002 in the rural zone.