On Tuesday February 23, 2016, and within the framework of diversifying the educational offer and supporting and improving foreign languages in the education system, Mr. Rachid BENMOKHTAR, Minister of National Education and Vocational Training, and the Spanish Ambassador to Morocco chaired the ceremony of signing a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training and the Spanish University Alcala de Henares for the purpose of developing and improving the teaching and learning of Spanish in the Moroccan educational institutions.
The MOU was signed by Mr. Youssef BELKASSMI, the general secretary of the Ministry of National Education and Training, and Mr. Fernando Galvan Reula, President of the Spanish University. It aims at carrying out joint educational and cultural projects related to teaching Spanish to teachers, students and blossoming centers, through programs to support teaching Spanish as a foreign language in primary and high schools.
In his word for this occasion, Mr. BENMOKHTAR mentioned the importance the Ministry of Education grants to teaching foreign languages as these are a significant component of the curriculum that takes part in developing the human capital. He also showed that the new approach of the Ministry is based on enhancing and diversifying the educational offer through developing the curricula and pedagogical programs related to teaching foreign languages.
On the other hand, the Spanish Ambassador stressed the position granted to Spanish in the Kingdom of Morocco saying that the best example is the Minister of National Education and Vocational training who speaks and has a good command of it. He added that the Spanish Embassy works on improving the relationships between the two kingdoms at the levels of cultural and teaching through training the youths and organizing training sessions for students at the Spanish institutes in the Kingdom of Morocco.
In the same context, Mr. Fernando Galvan Reula expressed his pride that the Moroccan Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training signed a MOU with the Spanish university Alcala de Henares, pointing out that the university had developed distance training programs to support the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in primary and high schools. He added that the Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training, through this agreement, will be able to benefit from these programs inside the educational institutions.
Under this memorandum, this project will be experimented in four high schools in Casablanca, Rabat and Tetouan, and in three blossoming centers in Dakhla, Fez and Oujda.
A training session will also be organized for the coordinators and teachers concerned by the project in order to support them and teach them new skills in teaching Spanish.
In the same vein, the Ministry undertakes to provide the necessary educational staff for monitoring, supervising and accompanying the learning processes inside the educational institutions and blossoming centers.
It is worth mentioning that the Moroccan-Spanish cooperation is governed by a cultural convention signed in Rabat on October 14, 1980, and a convention on strategic partnership in the field of developing cooperation at the level of culture, education and sport between the Kingdom of Morocco and the Kingdom of Spain signed in Rabat on October 3, 2012.
