The 2012-2013 school year has a special feature given the guidelines set out in the royal speech addressed to the nation on the occasion of the 59th anniversary of the Revolution of the King and the People on upgrading state schools and developing private education in a spirit of interaction and complementarity between the two systems.

    The upgrading of the education system, which is set as a foremost national priority, "should not merely guarantee all our children equitable access to schools and universities; it should also provide them with useful, motivating education and training suited to the kind of active life awaiting them," the Sovereign had said.

  The upgrading sought by HM King Mohammed VI should also enable young people to develop their skills and make full use of their creative energies towards ensuring their personal development so that they may shoulder their civic responsibilities in an environment that preserves their dignity, upholds equal opportunity and enables them to contribute to economic, social and cultural development.

    As part of these upgrading efforts comes the royal initiative "One million school bags", launched by the Sovereign in 2008 to give a strong impetus to universal basic education and affirm its mandatory nature, so as to ensure equal opportunities in education and fight against school dropout.

   The initiative, which got this year 350 million dirhams, covers all the provinces and prefectures of the Kingdom and benefits the students of primary and secondary schools, with priority given to rural areas (61%). It is part of a solidarity-based approach.

     On this occasion, HM the King visited two classes of pre-school education, a multimedia classroom, a classroom for Amazigh teaching, two classes of the first and second years of primary education.

    The Sovereign symbolically handed bags and textbooks to ten students from the Ahmed Cherkaoui school of Rabat and ten students from "Houdrane" secondary school of Houdrane rural commune (Khemisset province).