The education system in Morocco comprises pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary levels. School education is supervised by the Ministry of National Education, with considerable devolution to the regional level. Higher education falls under the Ministry of Higher Education and Executive Training.

School attendance is compulsory up to the age of 13. About 56% of young people are enrolled in secondary education, and 11% are in higher education. The government has launched several policy reviews to improve quality and access to education, and in particular to tackle a continuing problem of illiteracy. Support has been obtained from a number of international organisation such as USAID, UNICEF and the World Bank. A recent report after the new government being formed in 2017 has made Arabic as well as French Compulsory in Public School.

In the year 859, Fatima al-Fihri established Al-Qarawiyiin mosque in Fes, and its associated madrasa is considered by some institutions such as UNESCO and Guinness World Records to be the oldest existing, continually operating higher educational institution in the world. The Moroccan historian Mohamed Jabroun [ar] wrote that schools in Morocco were first built under the Almohad Caliphate (1121–1269). For centuries, public education in Morocco took place primarily in madrasas and kuttabs (كُتَّاب)—or as they were called in Morocco, msids (مسيد). Education at the msid was Islamic and delivered in Arabic. In addition to teaching Quranic exegesis (tafseer) and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), Islamic schools often taught a wide variety of subjects, including literature, science and history. The Marinids founded a number of these schools, including those in Fes, Meknes, and Salé, while the Saadis expanded the Ben Youssef Madrasa in Marrakesh.

In the aftermath of the sacking of the mellah of Tetuan in the Hispano-Moroccan War, the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a French organization working to empower Jews around the world through a French education, founded its first school in Tetuan in 1862, followed by schools in Tangier (1864), Essaouira (1866), and Asfi (1867), eventually reaching a total of 83 schools—more than all of the AIU's schools in the rest of the world.

Before the French Protectorate, Jewish girls' schools were teaching reading and writing, as well as vocational workplace training through skills such as tailoring and laundering, and later reading, writing, and shorthand. In 1913, the French authorities replicated this system for Muslim girls in Salé and later other cities.

Following the Treaty of Fes of 1912 and the establishment of the French Protectorate, France established public schools in which education was delivered in French.

Protectorate officials were hesitant about education for general public, afraid that an educated populace would become a source of opposition to the colonial regime. Resident General Hubert Lyautey's elitism shaped the educational system under the French Protectorate, and access to a modern education depended on a student's ethnicity and class, with separate educational opportunities for Europeans, Jews, and Muslims. Only a percentage of the children attending school were Muslim, and of these, most attended the traditional Quranic schools, or msids, which were beyond the purview of the Protectorate. Most Muslim students studying within the Protectorate's educational system received a vocational education to work in various manual trades.

Five schools for the "sons of notables" were established after 1916 for boys from elite Moroccan families. There were also two collèges founded in Fes (1914) and Rabat (1916). These boarding schools, which Susan Gilson Miller likens to Eton College, served to create Lyautey's vision for a class of bicultural Moroccan "gentlemen"—imbued with traditional ideals yet efficient in navigating modern bureaucratic systems—to fill roles in the country's administration.