What this competition is
Morocco hires teachers through a competitive written exam, not through a CV review or an interview alone. The main route into the profession is the concours de recrutement des enseignants cadres des AREF: a national competition run by the Ministry of National Education, Preschool and Sports through its 12 Regional Academies of Education and Training (AREF), with successful candidates then trained at a Regional Centre for Education and Training Professions (CRMEF) before permanent appointment. Unlike Egypt’s CAOA teacher competitions, which run as many separately scheduled, subject specific waves throughout the year, this is organised as one national session per recruitment cycle, with a single written exam date and a vacancy count published up front, even though the posts it fills are then allocated across Morocco’s 12 regions. Smaller, separately named teaching concours for specific grades or departments also exist outside this main cycle; this page covers the main annual AREF/CRMEF cycle, the one with the largest, most consistently reported scale.
How the competition actually runs
The ministry opens online registration for a few weeks, then holds a single written exam date for every candidate nationwide. The written stage has two parts: a general knowledge and administrative-organisation multiple-choice test, and a subject-specific written test matched to the teaching specialisation and school cycle (primary, middle or secondary) the candidate applied for. Candidates who clear the written stage sit an oral exam before a jury, which for teaching posts includes a practical exam: delivering a demonstration lesson in front of the jury.
Candidates who are admitted do not walk straight into a classroom as a permanent hire. They join a CRMEF qualification cycle, reported as running one to two years depending on the specialisation, which combines classroom teaching responsibility with pedagogical and administrative supervision. The cycle ends with a pedagogical aptitude exam; only candidates who pass it are confirmed in a permanent teaching post.
Who is eligible
Candidates must hold Moroccan nationality, be in full possession of their civil rights, have no conviction carrying a custodial sentence, and meet the physical fitness standard needed to carry out teaching duties. Candidates must not already be employed elsewhere. The academic requirement is a licence (bachelor’s degree) or a recognised equivalent diploma; most reporting describes this as a degree in an education-related field matching the specialisation and cycle applied for, though a licence d’etudes fondamentales or licence professionnelle in other fields has also been accepted for some specialisations and sessions. The age limit is set per session: for the November 2025 session it was raised from 30 to 35, a change unions and members of parliament had requested for several years.
Scale
The clearest single sourced figure for this competition’s scale comes from the 2021 session, not the current one: the ministry opened that session for roughly 20,000 posts (18,000 teaching posts and 2,000 specialised staff posts) across Morocco’s 12 regions, and Minister Chakib Benmoussa reported 47,000 applications within the first four days of registration alone. By the close of that session, SNRT News (Morocco’s national public broadcaster) reported 129,658 total applications and 105,102 candidates who actually sat the written exam. The November 2025 session opened for 19,000 posts across the primary, middle and secondary qualification cycles, with online registration from 30 October to 13 November 2025 and the written exam held on 22 November 2025, but no sourced total-applicant figure for that specific session was found in the research behind this page.
What this page does not yet cover
No sourced applicant total exists yet for the current November 2025 session, only for the 2021 session cited above; this page states that gap rather than assuming the two sessions drew comparable numbers. The exact weighting between the written and oral stages, and the detailed year-by-year breakdown of posts by region and specialisation, were not found in sourced form either and are left to the current session’s own official announcement. Smaller concours run for specific teaching grades or specialised departments outside this main annual cycle are not covered here and would need their own page if they clear the same sourcing bar.