Last month, Morocco sparked confusion in the country after it decided to do away with switching the clock back to standard time. But, it seems as though students are taking the matter seriously, demanding a reversal in the decision.
Students in the Moroccan cities of Salé and Casablanca took the matter into their own hands on Wednesday by organizing a protest and boycotting their school attendance.
The North African country signed a draft decree days before countries around the world switched their clocks, making "GMT+1 the official permanent time zone," according to BBC.
The draft decree puts Morocco's clock on permanent Daylight Saving Time all year round - despite the season.
Thus, students called on the Ministry of Education to maintain the same timetable as before. In avoiding to do so, "children would have had to go to school shortly after sunrise," according to Morocco World News.
Videos of the protests were shared
"With the new timetable, some classes will have school for only two hours in the afternoon while others will have only 4 or 4.5 hours of school total per day," as reported by Morocco World News.
In turn, this may "confuse school administrators and teachers, as they will have to change their planned classes to adjust to the new timetable."
"We ask [the government] to remove the daylight saving, and we also ask of them to create a space for us to stay at during lunch breaks because we have a hard time staying outside of school in break time," one student from Salé can be heard saying in a video posted to Facebook.
Starting Nov.12, students will abide by the new timetable, in which schools will begin at 9 a.m. and end at 5 p.m. with a two-hour lunch break between 1 and 3 p.m.
Schools in rural areas will start at 9 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. with a 30-minute lunch break. Schools with two teachers per classroom will see a split in schedules for students whereby one group starts at 9 a.m. and finishes at 1:30 p.m. while the other group starts at 1:30 p.m. and leaves at 6 p.m.
Schools will go back to the traditional timetable in spring.
The reason behind Morocco's decision
The decision was announced in a bid "to avoid multiple changes occurring many times during the year and their implications at multiple levels."
The sudden change left many people in a state of confusion, as users' devices automatically switched to standard time.
Inwi, a telecommunication company in the country, told Morocco World News that the company "is not responsible for changing the clock time. This is a problem coming from the phones which are programmed automatically."
Previously, Morocco changed its clocks "four times per year, twice for DST and twice for the weeks of Ramadan." The decree has been dubbed "an experiment."
According to Sky News, authorities believe the decision would "reduce electricity consumption" due to the extra hour of natural light.