Institution Tahar Sebti

In Morocco, less than half of children with disabilities aged 6 to 15 are in school, even though they are in the age group where basic education is compulsory. This alarming finding is particularly true for children aged 6 to 11: only 37.8% of them have access to education, although the overall enrolment rate for this age group is 99.5%. Girls are even more impacted since less than 30% of them are in school. Moreover, access to education seems to be capped: 79% of children with disabilities enrolled in a school had not exceeded the primary level at the time of the survey.

The Tahar Sebti Institution, a non-profit organization of public interest, is a primary school and a training center which has been promoting since 1953 a Moroccan educational model of excellency, citizenship, inclusivity, and innovation. The school hosts more than 500 pupils per year, the majority of whom are in a precarious situation. Indeed, 80% pupils come from disadvantaged backgrounds and 10% are disabled (autistic children, children with Down's syndrome, cerebral palsy) and are accompanied by individual care givers daily. The school displays an innovative educational model that puts the child at the heart of learning.

This child-centered ecosystem allows the creation of a conducive and prosperous environment to convey to the children the desire to learn (music, kindness, fun learning activities, etc.) Furthermore, the model values teachers’ initiatives which allows embodied with multiple projects and extra- curricular activities with an educational aim (numerous clubs such as classical music, sports, comedy among others. Another key element is the differentiated and multi-sensory pedagogy of the model: children are accompanied on a "case-by-case" basis according to their special needs and the teaching differentiates according to pupils’ receptivity to sensory stimuli (sight, touch, hearing).

Over the years, the Tahar Sebti Institution has been able to demonstrate excellence based on its model which puts children on the path to academic success. It reaches a 100% accession rate to secondary school versus a 77.5% at national level and it shows a 0% school dropout rate versus a 1.9% at national level and finally a 4,5% repetition rate versus a 11.4% at national level.

The Tahar Sebti Institution is a model of adaptability and responsiveness. Indeed, during Covid-19, many measures and activities have been successfully carried out and the remote school management system has been widely acclaimed by parents.

More recently, the Tahar Sebti Institution opened a medical-social center within the school. Launched in November 2021 with the support of engaged partners, the center offers a multidisciplinary, personalized and permanently adjusted support for each child with difficulties and carries out complete diagnoses at the beginning and at the end of the school year for each pupil. Several services are provided through a comprehensive accompaniment: speech therapy, psychology, special education, psychomotricity, creative and therapeutic workshops.

Throughout this center, Tahar Sebti Institution tackles the issue of inclusion within the educational setting. Specifically, it has 3 main objectives:

• Accompany children with specific skills/learning difficulties and children with disabilities for better inclusion into the school environment
• Offer to children from vulnerable backgrounds enrolled in the within the Tahar Sebti Institution or in the surrounding establishments, personalized follow-up and multidisciplinary support
• Make personalized follow-up accessible at an affordable cost for all children

The Tahar Sebti Institution is based on a comprehensive and integrated approach. Convinced of the key role of education for child development and well-being, the Institution has always been innovative and reaching for methods and learning process that respect children as unique individual.

Another particularity of the Tahar Sebti Institution is its active role in gathering all the actors of the ecosystem gravitating around the child: parents, families, teachers, medical and social professionals, etc. Training, workshops and other moments of exchange are organized within the Tahar Sebti Institution as well as with external structures.

The teaching staff and the pedagogical professionals are fully engaged in the whole learning process. All the educational materials are developed by the teachers as well as with the school life assistants and the children’s educators who accompany children with specific skills and disabilities throughout the school year. The Tahar Sebti Institution promotes collaboration, self-initiatives taking and flexibility among its teams.

The development of the medical-social center is the result of an over-time and incremental process. It started in 2015 with the opening of a psychological unit within the Tahar Sebti Institution. Two years later, a speech therapy unit opened, physical adapted education sessions were developed in 2018 and finally a psychomotricity unit was created in 2020. Facing a high demand confirmed by numerous discussion workshops with the all the teachers, pedagogical and administrative professionals, the Tahar Sebti Institution decided to formalize those units into a medical-social center. It has been a multi-actors process, key element of a sustainable and high impact project.

Moreover, the Institution is led by a major figure in the associative sector in Morocco, Mrs Souad Ettaoussi. Women's and children's rights activist, she has more than 30 years of experience in the associative field, she is convinced that education is the key to solving the vast majority of social problems. Throughout the innovative model of the Tahar Sebti Institution, she helps transform education in Morocco. She is passionate about innovation and inclusion in the school environment The Bureau of the Tahar Sebti Institution is run by three committed women, acting for several decades towards/in favor of social impact in Morocco: Mrs Amina Slaoui, Mrs Kenza Slaoui and Mrs Yasmine El Kadmiri.

The main idea of this project is to analyze how the implementation of the medical-social center within the Tahar Sebti Institution improves the learning process quality of children with specific skills/with disabilities and more broadly how it promotes their inclusion within the school.

Another interesting scope is the analysis of children with disabilities from the Tahar Sebti Institution trajectories and children coming from external structures.

• Activities: multidisciplinary support with multiples diagnosis and a follow up with regular and personalized consultations / training of the Tahar Sebti Institution teaching staff and other pedagogical professionals
• Outputs: children improve their skills, become more autonomous and gain confidence at school
• Short terms outcomes: children demonstrate ability to follow their education experience and feels more included among their peers
• Medium term outcomes: children are enrolled in “ordinary” schools, and some become high school students and graduate
• Longer-term outcomes: socio-economic inclusion of children with disabilities

According to Nesta’s Standards of Evidence, the Tahar Sebti Institution project currently reaches level 3 of evidence integration into its theory of change model.

At level 1, the main idea is to list the expected effects/impacts of the medical-social center/support of the Tahar Sebti Institution.

Bellow the list of those expected effects/impacts:

• Lower / 0% school dropout rate
• Gain of confidence
• Gain of autonomy
• Skills development
• Higher results / Higher motivation
• Elimination of school phobia phenomenon
• Establishment of a children-parents-teachers/pedagogical professionals’ triptych
• Higher awareness and engagement of parents
• Input and output diagnoses: tools to observe children skills evolution
• Follow up consultations: moments to quantify and qualify children’s assets and areas for improvement
• The therapeutic project and its objectives: key roadmap personalized for each child
• Example 1: in case of cessation of the accompaniment: the child relapses impacting its learning process
• Example 2: cases of successful/impactful accompaniments: children with disabilities enrolled in “ordinary” schools

At level 2, the Tahar Sebti Institution project team reflected on data/figures/indicators that could be used to prove the positive impact of its medical-social center and the support provided to children with disabilities

As mentioned, the project is currently at level 3, trying to demonstrate evidence of the actual impact of the Tahar Sebti Institution medical-social center.

The medical-social professionals highlighted some case-studies of children accompanied by the center:

Regarding this topic, the project team is also attempting to demonstrate the negative impact of children with disabilities who did not receive any medical-social support from the center.   

When a child with specific skills/disabilities is not followed by a multidisciplinary team, he does not benefit from educational facilities nor a specialized therapeutic project. Moreover, his parents and his entourage will not be equipped with theoretical tools such as practical postures to adopt, skills to work on, educational strategies to put in place.

Not enough mature to reach the next two levels of evidence integration, the project has a very high room for improvement. The project team is looking to progress towards levels 4 and 5 with the support and expertise of the LEAP professionals. 

Currently, the project team uses the following indicators to measure the medical-social center impact on children with disabilities:

• The number of beneficiaries (130 since the opening of the center)
• The number of diagnoses (92 since the opening of the center)
• The number of consultations (85)
• The number of external and internal children’s beneficiaries (internal: 85 / external: 27 external)
• The school dropout rate
• The number of children enrolled in “ordinary” schools/graduated from high school (medium term outcomes)

The Tahar Sebti Institution: Proof of concept of an innovative educational model based on a holistic approach to improve inclusion of children with specific skills and disabilities

The Tahar Sebti Institution is based on an innovative model and holistic approach, placing the child development at the heart of its mission, respecting every child specific skills and learning process.

Recently formalized, the medical-social center of the Tahar Sebti Institution constitutes an innovative solution to address the challenge of children with disabilities education. It tackles the question of children rights to quality education and inclusion which are fundamental and sustainable goals stated at both national and international levels.  

Since the opening of the center, the professional teams working at the Tahar Sebti Institution noticed many short-term outcomes such as children with disabilities in care improvement skills, gain of autonomous and confidence at school.

Collaborating with LEAP Fellows on this project will contribute to measure and underline the positive impact of medical-social support in the process of children development. It will also be an opportunity to demonstrate how this holistic approach contribute to the well-being of children with disabilities at school and reinforce their inclusion within the school system.

Throughout the LEAP sprint, the objective would be to guide the Tahar Sebti Institution professionals to measure the positive impact of the medical-social center as well as modeling the medical-social support process.

More specifically, the following deliverables would be useful:

• Case-studies: analysis of samples of children with disabilities/specific skills supported by the medical-social center
• A modeling document of the medical-social center experience composed among others, of:
  • The presentation of the medical-social support process
  • A mapping of key actors involved in the medical-social support process
  • Formalized training sessions and materials on medical-social support

Hosting a LEAP project would considerably bring added value to the Tahar Sebti Institution expertise. The successful outcome of this project such as the elaboration of evidence-based deliverables would contribute and support the strategy of the Tahar Sebti Institution to stand as a reference and duplicate its model of medical-social center in other schools/associations hosting children with disabilities.