Leadership and Values in Language Education - Al Akhawayn ...

45Proceedings of the 27 th MATE Annual ConferenceToward a New Conceptualization of Teacher Leadershipin Moroccan SchoolsHassan BelhiahAl Akhawayn University, Ifrane“Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.”John F. Kennedy1. PreambleToward the end of the last millennium, the Ministry of National Education inMorocco launched an ambitious program that sought to reform Moroccanschools. This program culminated in the publication of the National Charter ofEducation and Training, the goal of which is to ensure a healthy learning andteaching environment. Laudable though these efforts are, nine years after theCharter had been launched; the situation in Moroccan schools still leaves much tobe desired.Moroccan teachers unfortunately continue to face many obstacles that militateagainst their transformation into teacher leaders. Indeed, it is unreasonable toexpect teachers to be agents of change when their teaching conditions areuntoward, to say the least. Success stories pertinent to public schools in Moroccoare hard to come by. Instead what we read in newspapers day in day out arestories that make one, sometimes, cringe with shame for being a teacher. Sevenyears after the introduction of the reforms, teachers still have the same oldfashionedcomplaints: overcrowded classrooms, lack of incentives, measlysalaries, lack of opportunities for professional and intellectual growth, anegregious promotion system, lack of management competencies and what haveyou. This has resulted in teacher strikes being a monthly occurrence, so much sothat several political parties are vying to take the lead in calling for strikes in theirnames, which has had the undesirable effect of balkanizing teachers’ efforts, anddebilitating their strife, in the process.While it is not my intention to paint a gloomy picture of the educational system inMorocco, nor to cast aspersions on the efforts that are being made to improve thecurrent situation, I cannot emphasize enough the need to take these issuesseriously before it becomes too much too late. The recent reforms, which wereheralded by the government as a milestone in the history of the educationalsystem in Morocco, do not appear to have achieved their desiderata for having