Teaching Programming in Primary Schools in Morocco

Computer science, code, programming, or even computational thinking are some of the terms recently used from elementary school to high school to accompany the arrival of a new discipline that sees its initiation planned from elementary school (MEN, 2015). Designed to introduce children and teenagers to programming, Scratch is a software program that helps children develop programming skills and learn the skills underlying computer thinking. This paper presents the results of a survey sent to teachers and students in Morocco. The goal of the survey was to find out the opinion of Moroccan people toward programming teaching in Primary Education. 114 respondents filled and returned the survey showing that: 85.1% (51.8% strongly agree, 33.3% agree) out of the respondents consider that teaching programming in Primary Education is functional. Moreover, 71.9% out of 51 respondents use Scratch as specialized software for introducing programming in primary schools.