Despite significant enrolment gains, gendered disparities in educational outcomes and post-school trajectories persist in many North African contexts. The complex interplay between schooling experiences and the formation of youth aspirations, particularly along gender lines, remains underexplored in the region. This study investigates how secondary schooling experiences in a specific national context shape the educational and career aspirations of adolescent girls and boys, aiming to identify key institutional and socio-cultural factors that facilitate or constrain aspiration formation. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was employed. A quantitative survey of secondary school students provided broad patterns, followed by in-depth qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with a purposively selected sub-sample to explicate the mechanisms behind the quantitative trends. Quantitative analysis revealed a significant gender gap in STEM-related aspirations, with boys three times more likely to express such ambitions. Qualitative data identified a recurrent theme of 'internalised constraint' among high-achieving girls, who often discounted prestigious career pathways due to perceived future familial obligations. The study concludes that schools, while providing equal access, often inadvertently reinforce traditional gender norms through curricular tracking, career guidance, and implicit teacher expectations, thereby shaping differentiated aspiration pathways. Curriculum reforms should integrate gender-sensitive career guidance. Teacher professional development programmes must address unconscious bias. Policymakers should establish mentorship schemes linking girls with female professionals in non-traditional fields. gender and education, aspiration formation, mixed methods, secondary schooling, Morocco, educational trajectories This paper provides novel empirical evidence of the specific school-based mechanisms that contribute to the gendered divergence of aspirations, moving beyond broad access metrics to analyse the qualitative experience of schooling.
Amira El-Mansouri (Tue,) studied this question.