Actors, Action System And Strategy: Logics Of Bureaucracy And Issues Of Professionalism In The Moroccan Educational System

Due to the extent of the social expectations (real and symbolic that the Moroccan education system is facing (quality education, social promotion, integration into the labour market, etc.), the various political discourses of the reform tend to be build/rebuild through the undermining of bureaucratic management logic. However, even beyond the educational field, it is the entire public administration system that is often criticized as bureaucratic (in the pejorative sense), budgetary and paralyzing (860,000 civil servants, 53.6% of whom work in the education and training sector). This is evidenced by national evaluation reports which call for the urgent inclusion of the public service in the logic of management by performance and results. This article aims to reflect on current changes and future challenges in the management and governance of the Moroccan education system. The aim is to develop a mapping of actors capable of helping to understand the action system, roles, strategies and institutional issues. To do this, we propose a discussion on the decoupling of logic of action between a bureaucratic perspective and a professional perspective. The main results come from a field survey of around ten secondary school principals. The latter point to a certain number of paradoxes in the exercise of their function. Paradoxes that reveal the real issues of governance of the education system in Morocco.