Men and Women’s Education and Illiteracy in Adrar Speech Community

In Algeria, education is compulsory for males and females. This foundational decision was taken right after the independence of the country in 1962. Soon after, in 1963, the central government decided the Arabisation of the whole educational levels starting from primary school till university. At the same period, illiteracy-eradication programmes were launched by the Ministry of Education to get rid of this post-colonial scourge. In the administrative department (or Wilaya) of Adrar, former Tuat, young males and females attend Quranic schools (Zawaya) well before any formal education, that is as early as 4-5 years of age. The adult people who are not enrolled in formal classes could sit for nonformal ones. However, actual measurements and statistics reveal that the number of male and female pupils is not balanced: The present research paper aims at describing this phenomenon through statistics provided by the last National Census (2008), Adrar local educational academy, and Adrar Illiteracy-eradication Centre. The methodology consists in interviewing representatives and directors of the aforementioned institutions and surveying their archives and enrollment registers. The overall results show that the boys are more numerous than the girls in formal schools, while the reverse trend is noticed in Illiteracy-eradication classes where women are more present than men. From sociological and sociolinguistic viewpoints, women’s increase of attendance of illiteracy-eradication classes can be interpreted as their attempt at having a certain educational level to overcome societal difficulties, at climbing up the social ladder, and at securing prestigious social positions within the community.


Introduction
neither afford going to the foreign colonial schools nor were they encouraged to do so by the religious scholars as a way of rejecting the French language and the French colonisation (Bouhania, 2008). Most of them voluntarily attended the Zawaya, to learn both CA and the Quran. The other main incongruity concerns the disproportion that exists between males and females. Adrarian women did not and still do not attend Quranic schools as easily and as freely as men. Though they learn to read, write and speak MSA, their number does not equal that of the males. For instance, a sample of ninety-six (n=96) learners selected from a secondary school in Fenoughil, a rural area situated thirty (30) kilometres south to Adrar-city, fills in a questionnaire which questions consider formal and informal education. The following figure reports the answers to a question about whether the young learners' attended Zawaya lectures before primary school or not? The figure shows that ten (n=10, or 23.08%)) out of forty-two (n=42) young rural girls attended the Quranic schools before formal education; whereas, twenty-six (n=26, or 48.14%) out of fifty-four (n=54) young rural boys did the same. In other words, the girls are twice less numerous than the boys in Quranic schools, though they live in a rural area where the society is conservative and still promotes the teaching of 'Arabic' and the Qur'an. To cross-check the results obtained with Fenoughil secondary school, another random sample is put to test. This time, the participants (n=157, 73 females and 84 males) are selected randomly from Adrarcity, a semi-urban area. It is required from the 15-20 years old secondary school pupils to take the questionnaires home and fill them with their parents and/or grand-parents, specifically the questions about education. The adult population consists of people aged 40 years old and more.    2 and 3 reveal several points; the majority of young and old Adrar males and females attend Quranic schools. Yet, their numbers are not equal. Very few males aged 65 years-old and more could join these informal schools because they were not granted any rights to education during the French colonisation,. On the other hand, both figures show that the highest number of people who attended Quranic school classes is that of the cohort of people aged in between 35 and 45 years. That is, the category of those males and females who were born just before or just after independence. The males aged 15-35 year-old could go to the Zawaya as well as to the formal educational classes. Overall, the number of young pupils is higher than that of the eldest. Chart 3 shows that the young women have more opportunity to attend the Quranic schools than their grown up counterparts. All the women aged 50 and more have never attended these informal schools. This fact is historically accounted for; during the French colonisation, the women confronted many problems, among which providing food, clothing and shelter for their children. At that time, priority was not for education but for survival. Communally, the women were in charge of the home and the education of their children. Their homely concerns obliged them to care about the household chores rather than about personal improvement. In a few words, the priority was survival rather than social prestige. Previous charts (i.e.: figure1, 2, and 3) confirm that the males have more opportunity than the women to attend both formal and informal schools in Adrar province. However, the next section reveals a different tendency: the women are more numerous than the men to sit for illiteracy-eradication programmes.

Illiteracy of Adrar Speech Community
At the international level, the UNESCO's General Assembly of October 26, 1966 declared that September 08 th will be an International Day for Literacy. The celebration aims at reminding the international community of the importance of literacy to individuals, communities, and whole societies. After the independence of Algeria, the southerners who did not attend any formal schools nor Zawaya had the chance to sit for non-formal adult education courses known as Illiteracy Eradication Programmes. Nowadays, the number of people who register in these programmes is significant.

Illiteracy-eradication programmes
With the advent of independence, the Algerian government launched several programmes aiming at reducing the illiteracy of the population which, in 1962, concerned 85% of the whole adult population. In modern times, the central government decision-makers took the resolution to eradicate illiteracy. In 2007, the authorities established the National Strategy for the Eradication of Illiteracy (Stratégie Nationale pour l'Eradication de l'Analphabétisme, SNA), which succeeded in reducing the illiteracy rate from 85% in 1962 to 22% in 2016, and finally to 9.44% in 2019 (Guemmouri, 2018). The policy necessitated the foundation of the National Office for Adult Literacy and Education (Office National d'Alphabétisation et d'Enseignement pour Adultes, ONAEA) under the guidance of the Ministry of Education and the supervision of the 48 academies of education (Directions de l'éducation) and their annexes dispersed around the country. To eradicate illiteracy, the Ministry of Education provided ONAEA with the primary school books and programmes. The handbooks and manuals were not only approved by the Ministry's pedagogical services, but were also adapted by the national and regional pedagogical inspectors to fit the level of the adult illiterate learners. More than that, the programmes moved from the strategy of illiteracyeradication to numeral-eradication, i.e.: to get rid of the mathematical problems encountered by the grown up population.

Illiteracy-eradication manual and syllabus
The illiteracy-eradication syllabus consists of three levels and two academic years. The first year concerns the beginners or those who neither read nor write; its duration is nine months and starts from October 1 st till June 30 th . The second and third levels compose the second year; they last four and five months, respectively. The registered learners may be aged 15 to 55 year-old and more; the minimum age limit being 11 years old, that is the maximum age for registration at primary school level. After registry, the learners undertake an admission test, a probe that enables the teachers to evaluate their knowledge of 'Arabic' (MSA) and calculus. After the examination, the learners split into 1 st and 2 nd level attendees. Level1, referred to as the 'common core' (Tronc Commun), subdivides into three stages. The first stage lasts for one month and corresponds mainly to the 'introductory level', where the learners are introduced to the basics of 'Arabic' and calculus during 17 sessions and seventeen hours. The second stage is a six-month period; it is dedicated to the elementary teachings; it tackles topics dealing with the environment and nature, and health and sport. Stage three, which is a two-month period, is about active teachings of skills such as communication, painting, and tourism. Level2 of the 2 nd year is firmly grounded on the Competency Based Approach and Competency Based Education of the Ministry of National Education. Learner-centred methods, Project-based pedagogy and Text comparison are principles applied during this second phase. They aim at developing the teaching and learning process, caring about the learners' characteristics and peculiarities, establishing skills in a short span of time, enabling learners to deal with various topics, stimulating the learner's motivation, and, last but not least, making the learner at the centre of all processes. After nine months, level2 ends with a final exam on 'Arabic' and mathematics (calculus). Although the exam is national, taking place at the same period, but the questions are set locally. Each Wilaya designates a group (cell) of teachers to prepare and propose exam topics on both matters, i.e.: 'Arabic' and mathematics, along their corrected form. The learners are examined through the selected subjects. The successful learners receive a certificate for basic learning that qualifies them to attend formal education primary or intermediate school classes, distance education learning programmes, and even sit for vocational training (Formation professionnelle). Thanks to the certificate, learners can ask national unemployment agencies such as ANEM, ANGEM and ANSEJ for help to set their own projects and microenterprises. In 2013, under the sponsorship of the United Nations through the PNUD (Programme des Nations Unies pour le Développement, United Nations Development Programme) and the UNICEF (United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund), various Literacy and Pre-Apprenticeship Centres for the Woman and the Girl have been founded to promote the teaching and training of the rural women in Algeria. The centres were established in the rural areas of Djelfa (07 centres) and those of Adrar (02 centres). To help overcome the women's transportation and domestic difficulties, the centres make available buses and kindergartens to the married women as well as to the young girls (Selmi, 2019). The Literacy and Pre-Apprenticeship Centres for the Woman and the Girl provide not only illiteracyeradication lectures on 'Arabic' and mathematics, but do also train the women and the girls to certain jobs such as weaving, pottery, and computing. In Adrar, the illiteracy-eradication programmes have long been established. Yet, as will be discussed next, those centres have to confront some peculiar circumstances characterising the local society.

Illiteracy-eradication in Adrar
The 1998 national census showed that Adrar male and female illiterates aged 10 years and more represented 35.75% (or 78284 persons). According to the ONS bulletins of 2019, the number of illiterates lowered to 23.1%. The next figure shows that the number of uneducated women is higher than that of the men; it is twice as important, i.e.: 32.3 vs 14.1%. In figure n°5, one notices that the number of illiterate males is less important in Adrar, the capital-city, and in Timimoun the second most important urban centre of the Wilaya of Adrar. Conversely, in the Ksour (villages) of Talmine, Charouine and Ksar Kaddour, the number of unschooled people grows notably. This may be due to the fact that urban dwellers are more motivated than the rural inhabitants to learn 'Arabic', which will enable them to have access to work and to better economic and social opportunities. It may also be the case that rural individuals do not have the same motives as those of urban folks, and that their work on the fields does not grant them enough time to study and go to formal school. The other noticeable argument is that uneducated women are more numerous than illiterate men in rural areas as well as in the economic and cultural centres like Adrar and Timimoun. This confirms the previous opinion that males are sent to both Quranic schools and formal educational classes more than females, for the local conservative society still sees that a man should learn 'Arabic' to be a fullfledged active and productive member of society. The members of the Adrarian speech community are aware of the fact that mastery and command of 'Arabic' is a sine qua non condition for a better social retribution according to the standard and values of the society. Their strategy, then, consists in developing knowledge of MSA (Modern Standard Arabic) through reading, speaking and writing to progress in their future careers and gain momentum at the local society.
On the other hand, figure 5 shows that Adrar rural and urban dwellers do the effort of learning 'Arabic' even at a relatively older age. This means that there is a real collective impetus for the learning of the language and that the stimulus may be social as well as individual. To achieve this enterprise, the locals attend the illiteracy-eradication programmes, which are found in Illiteracyeradication centres scattered around the main city centres and villages of the Wilaya.

Illiteracy-eradication centres of Adrar
Adrar community's traditional beliefs and customs have changed through time. Nowadays, as will be displayed in the next lines, the women are considerably more numerous than men in attending Illiteracy-eradication programmes. As stated by the director of the Illiteracy-eradication centre of Adrar, the female learners' aims and drives are both social and individual, for the women would like to read, speak and write 'Arabic' to participate to the local development and improve their personal standards. Societal attitudes towards literacy and competence in the basic language skills are affected, and future prospects will be available for the women. In a few words, a change is in progress in the Adrarian society and speech community.
On the other hand, the director of the Illiteracy-eradication centre of Adrar states that the majority of the males enrolling in the programme are prison detainees. Nowadays, there are more than 480 illiteracy-eradication classrooms scattered around the Wilaya. Figure 6 indicates that the number of female learners attending illiteracy-eradication programmes varies from one year to another; for example, from 2198 women registered in 1999 the number augmented to 7832 in 2004 and lowered to 5031 in 2006. Women's attendance has reached the number of 8506, that is 5818 in level1 and 2688 in level2. (Selmi, 2019) The males' figures, however, increased from 143 in 1999 to 445 in 2004, but sensibly decreased in 2006 (n=07) to reach 194 (or 3.22%) for the 1 st level and 39 (or 1.43%) for the 2 nd todays. These data inform about the disparity that characterises male and female registration to the Illiteracy-eradication programmes. Although the centres aim at providing literacy and occupation training to the rural women, there are still societal drawbacks that prevent the females to attend those schools; the mentalities have not yet changed in the small and remote villages, and the male inhabitants do not allow neither the girls nor the women to sit for formal and informal school classes. Consequently, the rate of success and failure of the Literacy and Pre-Apprenticeship Centres for the Woman and the Girl is dependent on the societal attitudes of the male locals towards the literacy of the woman and the girl. As an illustration, the director of the illiteracy-eradication centre of Adrar draws attention to the centres of Ouled Aissa and Ouled Brahim which, because they are closer to the cultural centres of Timimoun and Adrar, respectively, have registered a significant success in matter of women's enrolments. Moreover, the director mentions that Talmine's centre was the first model and starting point for the Literacy and Pre-Apprenticeship Centres for the Woman and the Girl in the Wilaya of Adrar. Yet, and because of the local mind-set, the rate of enrolment of the girls and the women was minor.

Illiteracy-eradication programmes and staff
Before tackling the illiteracy-eradication curriculum, a word about the teaching staff imposes itself. In Adrar, and according to the latest statistics of ONAEA-Adrar (2017), there are more than 430 teachers scattered around the illiteracy-eradication centres; 186 of them are recruited solely for the illiteracyeradication centres, whereas the rest are involved in the professional reinsertion of the illiterate population.
The illiteracy-eradication core curricula are similar all throughout the country. They split into two levels with a nine-month duration for each, starting in October and finishing in June. The first level, referred to as the 'Common Core', subdivides into three stages. Stage 1, where the learners are introduced to basic language elements such as personal pronouns, everyday vocabulary and nouns, lasts one month. In stage2, the learners receive basic courses for 6 months; they participate orally to the lectures, read, write, and do exercises and drills. At the end of each pedagogical unit, they perform an activity. Finally, in stage3, the learners participate actively to the courses through pedagogical activities, projects and 'exposés'. This stage lasts 2 months and enables the readers to read and write 'Arabic', to express themselves orally and in written form, and to know the syntactic rules of the language. Level 2, on the other side, splits into two main stages; stage2 and stage3. Stage 2 is labelled the 'starting period', and takes place from November to January. Each month consists of one theme that subdivides into two pedagogical units; the latter split into two-week periods and 4 sessions per week, i.e.: 09 hours/week, 36 hours/month and 144 hours for the whole stage period. Stage 3 is referred to as the 'continuance period'; it starts in February and closes in June. Just like the former stage, stage3 consists of units that are taught throughout 180 hours, with an average of 36 hours/month and 9 hours/week. The units comprise texts that are discussed orally in class, then the learners write short passages to express themselves in written form. The texts are of various types; they could be fictional, discursive, descriptive, analytic, argumentative, and instructional. The last week of each month is dedicated to activities evolving around the themes developed. The activities or projects are of two sorts, functional and creative. In the first case, the learners study how to fill in a form, a check, a request paper or an instruction, how to write a professional card, and how to set a correspondence letter. In the second case, the illiteracy-eradication learners are encouraged to prepare a discourse text for an eventual speech, evaluation, or prize award. They are also taught how to prepare posters and brochures for some specific events such as photo salons, and manuscript descriptions. They are also involved in some agricultural as well as industrial projects whereby they learn dealing with gardening and craftsmanship skills. At the end of the ninth month, the learners pass an exam which allows the teachers to evaluate their abilities to read and write texts of different kinds and contents. At this level, the learner must be able to express himself both orally and in writing, and must be capable of comprehending texts and discourse of whatever nature.
Following modern new trends and the changing linguistic priorities of the country, the illiteracyeradication programme centres in Adrar have added two new language options to their curricula, French and Tamazight. These last will be tackled in the next sub-titles.

Tamazight in Illiteracy-eradication programmes
Tamazight is taught in the illiteracy-eradication centres of Adrar since 2016. However, and starting from the ratification of the convention between ONAEA and the HCA (Haut Commissariat à l'Amazighité, High Commissionership to Amazighity) of October 13 th , 2018, the teaching of Tamazight has been generalised to all centres throughout the country. According to the statistics of ONAEA, during 2017 more than 1253 young and old adult learners enrolled to attend Tamazight classes in 23 Wilaya of the republic. The Tamazight programme is based on that of 4 th year primary level of national education; the latter, it is worth noting, is adapted to suit the grown-up people. More than that, under the supports of the HCA, the programme breaks down into three levels that facilitate, promote and enhance the teaching/learning process of the Amazigh language variety. As a way to boost and spread Tamazight, the HCA has embarked on a pedagogical policy whereby all its documents are translated and published in the Amazigh language. These last are made available to all Tamazight teachers and researchers, and most particularly to those involved in the illiteracyeradication programmes. The French language, however, is still at its beginning in the Illiteracy-eradication centres of Adrar. In fact, no official programme is available, and the French teachers are free to use whatever course books and teaching methodology they feel fit the level of the learners. The Quranic schools are among the many factors that facilitated 'Arabisation' in Adrar. The nationalist enthusiasm that characterised Algeria after independence was a significant cause for the young people to learn their ancestral language variety, i.e.: 'Arabic'. This phenomenon is detailed in the next section.

Arabisation and Tamazight
Post-independence Algeria took two fundamental linguistic decisions, namely Arabisation and the formalization of Tamazight as an official language. Those resolutions have changed the sociolinguistic landscape of Algeria, and, subsequently, societal attitudes towards both 'Arabic' and Tamazight have changed.
As a Language Planning and Linguistic Policy, Arabisation aimed at reattributing 'Arabic' (Classical or Modern) its prestigious status that was lost during the colonial period (Benrabah 1999(Benrabah , 2004(Benrabah and 2005. It sought to elevate this language variety to the level of a national language used all throughout Algeria. Arabisation meant to promote 'Arabic' at all levels of education, from primary school to university, as well as at the community level starting from the government and its various services, ministries, and so on. (Becetti, 2014;Dekhir, 2013;Ghazal, 2013). In fact, Arabisation was a political decision out of which the government wanted to reassess 'Arabic' as both national and official language of the country. Throughout that LP, the central political administration aimed at getting rid of the French language, which at the time of the application of Arabisation, was spoken by half of the Algerian population (Grandguillaume 1995 and. Arabisation was not welcomed by all the Algerian society, particularly the educated elite and the Tamazight speaking community (Mostari 2003;Lafkioui 2013). It was also not accepted by most inhabitants of the coastal line, who were mostly French rather than Arabic speakers and whose exposure to the language has historically been high, i.e.: 132 years. In southern Algeria, the informal-school system of the Zawaya facilitated the implementation of Arabisation. During the colonial era, for example, the Zawaya supported 'Arabic' as the language of the Quran, of classical poetry and of the literary heritage; this enabled them to preserve both the language and the Quran from eradication by the colonial forces. In Adrar, the impacts and consequences of the Zawaya's linguistic and educational policies are still felt nowadays. Today, the ability of the southerners to use French is insignificant compared to their mastery of 'Arabic', for the latter was seen not only as a means of expression, but also as a means of expressing nationalistic feelings and the retention of one's own identity. Arabisation, then, is quite symbolic to the southerners, who see in it an 'idealistic' opportunity directly related to the appropriation of 'Arabic' as the language of the whole society and as the medium of all functions, purposes and roles.

Arabisation of Adrar speech community
The Arabisation process seeks to spread 'Arabic' to all the spheres of society. It aims at imposing this language variety not only to all formal situations, but also as a means of communication in such domains as the home and the street. Although Arabisation confronted some obstacles in the north, in southern Algeria it did not face much troubles, since 'Arabic' (CA/MSA) was already taught in the Zawaya (Bouhania, 2012). Postindependence Adrar Arabic young speakers did not have any difficulties to attend formal education in 'Arabic'; they were already acquainted with that language. However, and it is worth mentioning, there was, and there still is, a social tradition which fosters disparity between male and female education in Adrar.
Since school is compulsory in Algeria, at the level of formal education, the girls can attend official instruction and their number is in constant increase (cf. ONS, 2019). The same process is witnessed in Adrar where the number of female pupils is significant and rises from one year to another even in Tamazight classes.

Tamazight in Adrar
Tamazight, a Berber language family, witnessed several important events during the late part of the 20 th century. and beginning of the 21 st . The first is about the promulgation of Tamazight as an official language in Algeria in the 1990s and the foundation of the Haut Commissariat à l'Amazighité (High Commissionership to Amazighity) in June 1995. The latter institution was in charge of encouraging the spread and use of Tamazight languages to the whole country through conferences, seminars, schools and university faculties.
The year 2006 saw the official promotion of the use of Tamazight through the mass-media, the radio, the television, and the newspapers. In Adrar, the local radio started broadcasting Tamazight (Tamachek and Zenet) programmes as early as 2004. Nowadays, after the 2006 official propagation of Tamazight through the radio broadcast systems, the rate of Tamazight programmes in both Zenet and Tamachek totals 25% of the whole grid (source, Radio of Adrar, 2019). During the late part of 2017, the Algerian Academy for Tamazight Languages (Académie Algérienne de la Langue Amazighe) is formally founded. Its first president and scientific board members are officially designated through the presidential decree n°77 of December, 23 rd 2018.
In the Wilaya of Adrar, Tamazight is not only broadcast through the radio but it is also taught at school. However, the Tamazight languages are instructed only in the Berber speaking areas of Timimoun in the Gourara, the Middle-Tuat and the Tidikelt.

Tamazight pedagogical classes
Actually, Tamazight is taught in eleven (n=11) primary schools and seven (n=07) intermediate ones.
They are found particularly in the Zenet (Berber) speaking area of Timimoun (Aougrout, Charouine, and Timimoun) and the Tamachek speaking areas of Middle-Tuat (Reggane and Sali) and Tidikelt such as Bord-Badji Mokhtar, situated at more than 800 kilometres south of Adrar-city. In those educational institutions, Tamazight classes last for at least three (s=03) hours a week and are taught by a few teachers. The number of Tamazight classes is so reduced that the educators must teach in several schools to fulfil their official weekly volume. As reported in Table1 (see Appendix1), the National Education Academy of Adrar has set several institutions for the teaching of Tamazight, starting from primary levels 4 and 5. There are fifty-three (s=53) primary school classes where Tamazight is taught three hours a week for each class; that is one hundred fifty-nine (n=159)

Tamazight learners
The total number of registered Tamazight primary school learners is one thousand seven hundred thirty-six (1736), among whom seven hundred and seven (or 40.72%) are girls. The numbers vary from one class to another and from one place to another. And as exemplified in Table 3   year 1989-1990 when more girls than boys were registered at school. It, then, decreased and followed a continual level during the first six years of present century. For 2019, no numbers about female learners were communicated to the researcher by the local Academy of Education, particularly its enrolment and pedagogy service. Yet, one can easily acknowledge that their number is in constant increase regarding the total numbers of educated females in Algeria which amounted to 47.98% out of 6360433 pupils in the three cycles in 2010. The government has also encouraged the recruitment of school teachers for the three levels.

The Teachers
The number of primary, intermediate and secondary school teachers has also become greater than it was in the 1960. It gradually passed from 1097 in 1980-1981 to 4162 in 2006-2007, i.e. 79.14 % of increase compared to the 1980's. The year 2019 does also witness an expense in the number of teachers in the Wilaya of Adrar for the three different cycles. In the primary level, there are 2944 instructors, while 2333 are in charge of the intermediate level. Adrar secondary schools have a total of 1464 teachers who are in charge of educating and preparing the learners to the final exam, the Baccalaureate. Table8 (see appendix7) and figure9 illustrate the findings:

Figure9: Number of teachers throughout four decades Conclusion and Discussion
The Algerian compulsory school system accelerated the education of young Adrar Arabic speakers of both sexes. It has also facilitated the regional academic institutions to implement the infrastructures which will permit people to attend school all throughout the area and throughout the ages. This educational system has also enabled the natives to send their children to school for free, so that, nowadays, one can say that illiteracy in Adrar has significantly receded. Hence, young Adrar Arabic speakers of both sexes attend school, and can climb the social ladder. The implementation of the Algerian language policy, i.e. 'Arabisation' could easily take place in Adrar province, since the people were already acquainted with 'Arabic' through the teaching of the latter language variety at the level of the religious shrines, the Zawaya. The role of the shrines was linguistic and societal, for the Zawaya worked hard to promote and keep up the Algerian Arabo-Muslim identity. After the independence of the country, the 'Arabisation' process was welcomed by the Zawaya, as it reflected their ideologies and principles. With regard to the disparity characterising Adrar males and females in both formal and informal schools, it is worth pointing to the issue of distance. This problem, although primarily geographical, is also a challenge of infrastructure, for the majority of primary, intermediate and secondary schools are found in the main centres (Adrar and Timimoun) and small villages (Aougrout, Aoulef, Fenoughil, Reggane, Zaouiet Kounta, etc.). In other words, transportation is at the core of the problem. Distance between the Ksour (villages) and the main municipalities is a serious impediment to formal education of the inhabitants of the Wilaya of Adrar. In the case of the young boys and girls, when no means (bus, car, bicycle) of transportation is available, traveling everyday along kilometres for hours to reach school causes their failure to attend class regularly, and consequently many learners drop down their studies and stay at home. Another major obstacle to education in Adrar is the lack of professional teachers, whether for foreign (English and French) or local (Tamazight) languages. In the former case, the absence of teachers of English or French in primary, intermediate and secondary schools of remote areas of the province has deep negative impacts on the pupils. When these last reach university level, they find themselves confronted to a dilemma whereby most medical, scientific and technological disciplines are taught in French and English. In the latter case, the fact that there are only ten Tamazight teachers in the entire province is a concern vis-à-vis the spread of the language to the local population. Moreover, this lack does not only affect the scattering of the teachers around the whole region, but it also represents a huge impediment to their output.