A Moroccan prep school is shaking up France’s elite track with standout math results and rare gender balance.
The conversation had been going on for nearly an hour, and the tray of Moroccan pastries had barely been touched, when their names finally came up around the table. The exchange had flowed easily, moving from daily routines to the demanding pace of classes, when Christophe Boeckel mentioned the prestigious preparatory schools “Ginette” (Sainte-Geneviève in Versailles), Louis-le-Grand and Henri-IV. With an amused smile, he let slip the words: “our real competitors.” The phrase, delivered lightly, nevertheless revealed a sense of pride—that from a campus in Benguerir, his students were now measured against the very institutions long considered untouchable benchmarks of excellence.
Competitors? When you look out the windows of the Benguerir school, where he serves as director of preparatory classes, the hushed streets of Versailles or Paris’s Left Bank seem far away. There are hills, but they are ochre under the already scorching May sun, nothing like the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the 5th arrondissement.
Yet, in this setting reminiscent of spaghetti westerns, lost in the middle of nowhere 70 kilometers north of Marrakech, Lydex has managed to carve out a place for itself alongside the best French science preparatory schools. Since 2020, this Moroccan institution has sent just over 12% of its MP (maths and physics) graduates to Polytechnique — 17 admitted this year, 16 last year, and 20 in 2023.
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