From Policy to Practice: Transformative Leadership for Inclusive Education of Children with Disabilities in Moroccan Schools

Abstract

This paper is a critical review of a Moroccan national guide on the implementation of inclusive education for children with disabilities in schools. Based on the broad structure that the Moroccan Ministry of Education has created (Direction des Curricula, 2019), the philosophical underpinnings, managerial skills, and organizational solutions needed to implement inclusive education are evaluated in this paper. The guide is an important policy tool that operationalizes international human-rights frameworks such as the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) within the Moroccan educational setting. This article examines the methodology of inclusive education as adopted in the guide, with special attention to the paradigm shift from segregation and integration to actual inclusion. The main conclusions point to the importance of changing the representations and attitudes of school directors and building professional competencies in participatory management and multi-stakeholder partnerships. The discussion shows that effective inclusive education involves planning, reorganizing, adapting to time constraints, and continuous evaluation. The paper contributes to the international literature on educational leadership for inclusion by offering Morocco's contextualized approach to implementing Article 24 of the CRPD.