thursday, january 7, 2021 at 11:46 am
Rabat – Nearly 54 million people over 15 in the Arab world are illiterate, including 6 million among young people (15-25 years), an average rate of 11%, according to the latest statistics from the Organization Arabic for Education, Science and Culture (ALECSO).
The pan-Arab organization has pointed to the considerable delay experienced by most Arab countries in implementing literacy programs for adults, especially women.
ALECSO, which expects 49 million only for 2020, sounded the alarm and calls on the countries concerned to adopt more extensive actions to remedy this situation, and this within the framework of the Arab literacy pact 2015- 2024.
According to this Organization, it is a question of adopting a reference framework for literacy, supposed to meet development needs and which will make it possible to develop new education policies.
Accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic, illiteracy still remains one of the major challenges to be overcome, especially in rural and isolated areas, in order to achieve the objectives of the Sustainable Development Program by 2030.
As part of the education program for 2030 and lifelong learning, the Department of Education under ALECSO will organize January 08, 2021 on the occasion of the Arab Day of Struggle against illiteracy, in coordination with the National Commissions in the Arab world, a conference by videoconference on “the best possible ways and practices in adult education and learning in Arab countries”.
In Morocco, the situation is promising since the country has recorded, according to the National Agency for the Fight against Illiteracy (ANLCA), 1,022,000 beneficiaries of programs to combat illiteracy for the 2019-2020 school year. , an increase of 9.3% compared to the previous year, despite the exceptional context marked by the Covid-19 pandemic which led to the suspension of literacy classes in all centers since Monday 16 March 2020.
Regarding the distance training project, the Agency has set up the “Alpha Nour” and “Alpha Taahil” applications to expand the circle of beneficiaries of literacy programs.
The ANLCA adopted a roadmap comprising 25 projects and spanning the period 2017-2021 which aims to strengthen the coordination and mobilization of all stakeholders, in order to accelerate the pace of quantitative and qualitative results of fight against illiteracy, with a view to reducing the overall illiteracy rate to 20% in 2021 and to less than 10% in 2026.
In addition, and in the digital age, learning is also becoming digital in a constantly changing world.
In this wake, the director of the ANLCA, Abdessamih Mahmoud, affirmed that “the ANLCA is developing digital resources on the basis of already existing programs, to allow beneficiaries to access literacy lessons through various information technology tools ”.
“The ANLCA has adopted distance education in order to broaden the coverage of beneficiaries of literacy programs, in close collaboration with the various national and international partners”, he said on the occasion of the national day against illiteracy.
The Agency has included the E-learning project among the 25 projects of its 2017-2021 roadmap and since then, “several projects have emerged with the support and support of multiple national and international partners”, so as to strengthen distance learning by integrating new information and communication technologies, he added.
–
