ix thousand Moroccan primary schools, about 80% of the public network, were running the Pioneer Schools program in September 2026, a reform launched in 2023 in six hundred and twenty-six establishments alone. The Morocco Innovation and Evaluation Lab, a laboratory of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, has published its preliminary findings.
On roughly thirty-six thousand pupils, measured against schools that had not yet joined the reform, the evaluation detects an average effect of 0.6 standard deviations on learning after one year. That would carry the median pupil from the 50th percentile to close to the 72nd, nearly three ordinary school years of progress in a single one.
With the median effect of education programs at 0.10 standard deviations in low- and middle-income countries, the Pioneer Schools rank among the 10% most effective interventions ever measured.
The gain is not captured by the strongest pupils: 0.59 standard deviations among those struggling most against 0.50 among the highest performers. The laboratory notes all the same that the magnitude slipped as the reform grew, before steadying in the third year.
The full working paper, methodology included, is still to come. It will say whether Morocco, in these years, will have kept the promise every school system in the global South is trying to keep.
Photo: K. Essalak/Le360.
Morocco Innovation and Evaluation Lab - Programme des Écoles Pionnières: résultats préliminaires de l’évaluation d’impact après trois ans de mise en œuvre
