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The Israeli Education System

Dr. Ami Volansky

Tel-Aviv University

Submitted to

The International Encyclopedia of Education

Elsevier – Oxford

The author wishes to thank Prof. Yuval Dror of Tel-Aviv University and Eliezer Shmueli,

former Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Education, whose deep familiarity with

the Israeli education system as it has evolved over the years was instrumental in ensuring

the clarity and accuracy of the material covered in this paper.

December 2007

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Background

As of late 2006, Israel’s population was at 7.1 million – 16.5% Muslim, 2% Christian,

1.6% Druze, and slightly over 80% Jewish. The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 as

a Jewish national home – following the destruction, on the European continent, of a third

of the Jewish people during World War II – triggered waves of Jewish immigration to

Israel from countries around the world – a phenomenon that continues to this day. Israel

is a rich and unusual demographic mosaic, in which diverse cultures intermingle and the

streets resound with a medley of languages other than the official Hebrew and Arabic.

Jews from a hundred and thirty countries, representing over a hundred different

languages (Shohamy, 2006) have made their home here. In addition to the formidable

task of building a nation, Israel has had to cope, throughout the years, with a tense

geopolitical situation in the Middle East.. These facts elucidate the complex reality with

which the Israeli education system is faced.

Complex though it may be, Israeli society is perceived, , as a creative and vibrant one in

all spheres of life. For example, during the five-year period between 1999-2003, Israel

ranked third in number of scientific papers per capita, a world leader in applied science

and ranks second worldwide in astrophysics, third in computer science, and fourth in

molecular biology.1 All seven of the country’s universities were included in the list of

the world’s 500 leading research institutions for 2005.2 The local thirst for culture has

led to the creation of a wide and growing variety of cultural institutions. Indeed, recent

years have witnessed an unprecedented growth of cultural activity, reflected in a three-

fold increase in cultural consumption on the part of Israeli children and adolescents over

the last two decades.

On the economic level, since the 1980s Israel has undergone the transition from a

planned to a liberal economy. As of 2007 Israel’s GDP is $26,500 per capita.3:

economic growth rate was 5% in 2007, nearly double that of the OECD countries.4

Annual inflation is about 2%, the labor force participation rate is 55.2%, and the

unemployment rate is 8%.5. During the 1990s the ICT sector was the main force driving

Israel’s economic growth. To give some perspective, in 2004 the sector’s share of

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Israel’s total exports was 20%, compared with 13% for the same year in the OECD

countries.6

Despite Israel’s achievements in the areas of economic growth, immigrant absorption,

reach of cultural life, science and research, social disparities persist. A quarter of Israel’s

children live under the poverty line;7 the disparity in per-pupil spending on education

between the highest and lowest decile has held steady for the past decade at eleven-fold

(NIS 126 per month for the lowest decile versus NIS 1,355 for the highest decile in

2005).8

Against this background, it becomes easier to understand the complex circumstances in

which the Israeli education system operates: absorbing new immigrants whose native

language is not Hebrew, profound social and economic disparities and, above all, the

drive to meet international standards – as well as a demanding public’s expectations – for

scholastic performance. The Israeli education system is based on the foundations laid

during a fifty-year pre-state period of all walks of life were administered by the Vaad

Leumi, or Jewish National Council, mainly during the British Mandate in Palestine. This

infrastructure was influenced by the numerous initiatives, organizations and ideological

tracks that were active in Palestine from the end of the 19th century on and from which a

growing variety of educational enterprises emerged. These enterprises included

vocational education networks as well as boarding school systems ("youth village”) that

rescued children via “youth aliyah” frameworks prior to the European catastrophe as well

as, assisting young people in immigrating to Israel after the establishment of the state. At

the time these youth villages served a third of Israel’s children. Alongside the youth

village system, a joint school system developed that encompassed over four hundred

kibbutzim and which itself absorbed numerous immigrant children.

While the language of instruction for Jewish pupils is Hebrew, the language of instruction

for Arab pupils is Arabic. Israel’s Arab and Jewish education systems do not operate on

an equal footing. Over the years various infrastructural and service disparities have been

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identified between the Jewish and Arab, as will be discussed below. These disparities

have been a persistent source of frustration as well as for action.

In this article we will be looking at the various levels of Israel’s education system, from

early-childhood education through higher education, with particular attention to the

system’s internal contradictions, complexities and weaknesses, as well as to the major

challenges faced by each successive level.

Early-Childhood Education

Israel’s Compulsory Education Law calls for compulsory schooling from age 5 through

age 18. However, when the law was passed in 1949, a year after the founding of the

state, compulsory education was defined as eight years of schooling only,9 from age 5 to

age 13.10 The latter approach viewed early-childhood education as a preparatory stage

crucial to ensuring young children’s readiness for primary school and, in particular, to

narrowing educational disparities. This approach has found practical expression,

particularly since the 1980s, in intensified governmental efforts to encourage the

enrollment of children in preschools from age 3 – efforts that have taken the form of state

subsidies for early childhood education in Israel’s disadvantaged population sectors. As a

result of this policy, 37% of Israeli children aged 2 and up, 75% aged 3 and up, 86% aged

4 and up and 95% aged 5 and up were enrolled in preschools in 2006, for a total ages 2-5

preschool enrollment of 400,000.11

From a pedagogical point of view, the Israeli early-childhood education system

has undergone two distinct stages. During the first stage the focus was on education for

positive social habits, arts and crafts, music, holidays and festivals, hygiene and linguistic

usage,12 while until the late 1980s the pre-primary education system came to be

perceived as a framework for preparing children “in accordance with the requirements of

older pupils in the system.”13 This trend led to the development of a more demanding

curriculum that taught basic scholastic skills and strove to ensure a smooth continuum

between kindergarten and primary school. What occurred was, in essence, a complete

overhaul of the kindergarten curriculum, which was now oriented toward teaching

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arithmetic, science, art, life skills, and the historical-cultural heritage.14 The transition

from a relax pedagogy and free of external policy pressure to a more defined standards

and prerequisites policy generated considerable controversy within Israel’s education

system, that has continued to resonate into the twenty-first century. Despite the

pedagogical differences of opinion, Israel’s early childhood education system is generally

thought to possess many positive features and has earned a high degree of professional

and public esteem.

Primary Education

Israel's primary education system, in which some 800,000 pupils currently participate at

2,200 educational institutions, developed in three main stages.

The first stage, which spanned the first two decades of Israel’s existence, was

characterized by a melting-pot policy. Half of the country's pupils came from immigrant

families; in some localities immigrants formed the decisive majority. In order to promote

the development of a homogeneous society and to blur differences and disparities

between immigrants and veteran Israelis and between Jews of Western and of Middle

Eastern ethnic background, a uniform curriculum was adopted for the entire pupil

population. The main goal was to do away with the various educational streams that had

existed prior to the founding of the state and to absorb and unite the immigrants under a

'single uniform curriculum – to ensure the development of one unified people within one

state, by means of a single curriculum.'15 Schools and teachers were regarded as partners

in the ideological mission to forge a cohesive society. This aspiration to uniformity cast

the teaching profession in a conservative mold and impaired its ability to address the

tremendous differences that actually existed between different pupil groups (Dror, 2004).

The second period began in the late 1960s, when an approach gradually emerged that

called for emphasizing differences in pupil needs over uniformity in the provision of

educational services. This approach engendered a policy of the child centered approach.

It led Israel's primary education system to stress individually-tailored instruction, to

encourage independent learning and to foster the acquisition of inquiry based learning; it

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promoted active learning, enrichment of the learning environment, the offering of

electives, schedule flexibility and a multi-year curricular structure, democratization of the

school social framework, involvement in the community, an emphasis on identifying

individual pupil needs and a diminished reliance on standardized assessments (Bentoitz

1960; Eden 1971; Tzameret 1977; Shtall 1991; Tsabar-Ben Yehoshua 1990).

Additionally, a trend toward differential allocation of learning resources took hold, in

which priority was given to disadvantaged populations (Tsabar-Ben Yehoshua 1988;

Zilberstein 1984; Tsabar-Ben Yehoshua and Zilberstein 1999). This in turn created the

conditions for large-scale adoption of a school autonomy philosophy – to a point where a

third of Israel’s schools became self-managing (Volansky, 2003; Dror, 2007; Gibton &

Goldring, 2002; Gibton, Sabar & Goldring, 2000).

The third stage in the development of Israel’s primary education system is

characterized by contradictions in the realm of pedagogical policy. On the one hand, a

teacher empowerment policy and a trend toward transferring authority to the schools; an

understanding of the new information age and accessibility to knowledge and its

concomitant re-casting of the teacher as “facilitator” guiding the pupil to knowledge

sources, rather than serving as the sole source of knowledge in the classroom. This trend

harmonized with the growing tendency toward encouraging pupils to actively build their

own individual “knowledge maps” and toward employing the computer for instructional

purposes. At the same time, contradictory pedagogical approaches began to garner

support, approaches that called for increased standardization of teaching, learning and

testing methodologies. These approaches drew strength from Israel’s medium to low

rankings on international scales of scholastic performance, and from growing criticism of

instructional methods that gave pupils excessive degrees of creative and scholastic

latitude. This is reflected in the growing use of strictly-defined and rigid instruction

frameworks for the entire pupil population, as well as in the development of a culture of

high-stakes testing.

Israel's primary schools have, thus, undergone three major changes in pedagogical

approach – changes that have, necessarily, affected their organizational and

administrative structures. Schools have transitioned from a climate of extreme

centralization to one of pedagogical autonomy and self-management, while a current

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trend toward standardization is restricting the freedom of the teacher and the educational

institution and transferring significant pedagogical latitude from the schools back to the

central planning authorities.

Secondary Education

At the end of primary education, pupils move on to the secondary education system,

divided into junior and senior high schools. In 2007 610,000 pupils were enrolled in

1,588 schools comprising Grades 7 to 12.

Nearly half (47%) of these schools are operated by non-for-profit organizations,

while the other half are run by local authorities (38%) or the Israeli government (15%).16

Up until 1979, when secondary education became open to the majority of Israel's pupils,

a selective system was in place. Graduates of the primary education system were divided

into three groups: those headed for academically-oriented study in “grammar schools,”

those headed for vocational training at “technology schools,” and those who entered the

workforce directly. A series of policy changes opened the gates of secondary education

(through Grade 12) to a growing percentage of young people. These measures included:

the decision at the end of the 1960s to enact an education reform lengthening the period

of compulsory education to age 16 and the period of free schooling to age 18; the

establishment of junior high schools with upgraded curricula; the elimination, in 1973, of

screening exams for secondary education; the reformed matriculation exam system,

instituted in 1979, which provided for a more varied curriculum reflecting pupil needs,

multiple inteligence and differences; the trend toward differential budgetary allocation as

a means of strengthening disadvantages populations. All of these things contributed to a

profound change in the structure of secondary education in Israel.17 Over the course of

the last three decades this change has been reflected in three main indices: a greater

number of pupils from the middle to low range of the socioeconomic scale completing

the twelfth grade; a greater number of pupils finishing high school with a matriculation

certificate; and a greater number of pupils gaining admission to institutions of higher

education.18

These measures, taken both individually and together, led to changes in Israel’s

educational structure, particularly in terms of offering educational opportunity to

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disadvantaged populations for whom the gates of learning had previously been closed

(Shmueli, 1998; Volansky, 2005). These changes may largely be credited to the

increased scope given to schools for defining study disciplines with a high degree of

relevance to their pupils and communities, without renouncing the duty to teach and test

the entire Israeli pupil population in six or seven core subjects. A wide variety of unique

and innovative curricula were developed that had never before been on the education

system’s agenda: animal care, cosmetology and beauty, music and art, sports and culture

– all in addition to the required subjects comprising Hebrew/Arabic, English,

mathematics, the sciences, history, Bible, geography and civics. This was an era of

exceptional creativity and innovation in the education system, one that lives on in

memory as a “golden age.”

This age came to an end during the 1990s, when the education system was forced to yield

to growing pressure from Israeli society. The first to oppose the aforementioned

educational approach were the universities (Volansky 1999, 2005), which argued the

impossibility of ensuring qualitative matriculation standards in a situation where study

disciplines developed by the schools and not by the state. The second group to oppose

the “innovative” educational approach was the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition, a

movement involved in guaranteeing the rights of Jews of Middle Eastern (“Mizrachi”)

origin. One of the movement’s claims was that the education system’s vaunted flexibility

and variety had actually created a situation in which Mizrachi pupils were being

channeled toward less prestigious courses of study, mainly in the technology schools and

were, thereby, being barred from acquiring higher education – in contrast to native Israeli

pupils and to those of European/American origin. A third, “back to basics,” group called,

quite simply, for the elimination of non-core disciplines and for a re-embrace of the

basics, that is, of six or seven uniform subjects for the entire Israeli pupil population. By

the early years of the 21st century these pressures had gathered momentum in generating

change in the education system (Yogev, 2007). The change consisted primarily of a

transition to academically-oriented study, consistent with the back to basics approach.

This approach has been a source of discord since it began to gain currency during mid-

1990s. On the one hand, the overall percentage of Israeli pupils eligible for the

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matriculation certificate has risen to about 50%. This is, indeed, an impressive

improvement, considering that in 1990 only 35% of Israeli pupils were eligible for the

matriculation certificate. On the other hand, this contraction of the curricular structure

has left the other half of the secondary school population behind. These pupils have been

deprived of the kind of flexible educational option that they need in order to complete 12

years of compulsory schooling in an environment that engages them, challenges them,

brings their talents and abilities to the fore, and secures them a matriculation certificate so

that they can go on to tertiary education.

Brand-naming schools as successful or outstanding and using league tables to rank them

have intensified pressures with regard to pupil screening. The slashing of education

budgets during the past decade has also resulted in the inability of schools to implement

special curricula which by their very nature are more expensive. This development has

caused schools to limit their study offerings and to focus overwhelmingly on curricula

that require little more than a blackboard and chalk. School networks that developed

over decades as frameworks offering a broad variety of curricula spanning the range of

academic, technological and practical subjects, have been forced over the last ten years to

confine the bulk of their instructional activity to scientific/engineering subjects geared

mainly for the more academically-oriented segment of the pupil population. In effect,

school principals have been obliged to intensify their pupil screening activity as a way of

boosting the prestige of their schools, and to adopt curricula that are, in practice, suitable

for only the upper fifty percent of the pupil population. The ramifications of this policy

may be seen in the following table:

Table 1: Percentage of Those Completing 12 Years of Schooling and Percentage of

Those Eligible for the Matriculation Certificate, Per Cohort, Since the Founding of the

State:

Year Size of Cohort* % of Cohort Members Enrolled in Grade 12

% of Cohort Members Eligible for the

Matriculation Certificate at the End of Grade 12

1949** 12,000 6.7 1.6

1960 25,000 27 14.2

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1970 52,900 39.7 20 1980 65,500 53.4 21.3

1990 85,000 72 34.7

2000 103,000 86 43.6

2006 107,000 92 49.2

Source: Statistical Yearbooks, 1986-2007. Central Bureau of Statistics

*Cohort of 17 years olds

**Jewish population only

The table shows both the strengths and weaknesses of Israeli secondary education. The

larger the cohort, the greater the number of pupils who complete 12 years of schooling;

but in absolute terms the number of pupils completing Grade 12 without a matriculation

certificate adequate for tertiary education has also grown, reaching 54,000 in 2006. This

illuminates the significant challenge facing the Israeli education system – that of adapting

the curricular structure to make it relevant and meaningful for the lower 50% of its

enrollees who, despite the system's success in ensuring that they complete Grade 12,

nevertheless remain bereft of a ladder of opportunity leading to higher education.

It may be assumed that the coming decade will bring with it a search for balance

between the two trends described above, that of instructional standardization and

uniformity, and that of variety in educational offerings – variety that encompasses a

broader range of intelligences and talents than that currently addressed by the system.

Higher Education

Legal authority for Israel's system of higher education, which in 2007 comprised a

quarter of a million students in 65 educational institutions, lies with the Council for

Higher Education. A Higher Education Planning and Budgeting Committee operates

within the Council’s framework. These bodies, which are responsible for formulating

higher education policy, initiated a reform in 1993 which led, over the course of the

subsequent decade, to a substantial re-structuring of higher educational opportunity in

Israel.

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For most of the State of Israel’s existence, the higher education system was a monolithic

structure founded mainly on seven research universities. Starting in the mid-1990s the

system underwent a profound transformation, expanding to include new colleges and

evolving into a pluralistic structure that includes 65 institutions offering a broad range of

study options. This increase in the number of institutions was made possible in part by

the trend toward legitimizing degree conferral in disciplines not normally associated with

the research but on professional studies. Five main reasons may be identified for this

large-scale opening of the gates of academia. The first of these is the disparity that

existed around 1990 between the percentage of those eligible for the matriculation

certificate (35%) and those admitted for first-year studies at Israel’s institutions of higher

learning (20%). A particularly low rate of admittance to higher education was found

among Mizrachi Jews and in the Arab sector. The second factor was the growing

pressure exerted by professional post-secondary institutions for accreditation to grant

academic degrees. These were institutions offering courses of study in tourism services,

communications, insurance, optometry, dental hygiene, laboratory technology,

architecture and design, and various technological disciplines – as well as teacher training

colleges, only a minority of which awarded academic degrees prior to the reform.

The third factor was the rigorous screening policies that prevailed in the more

desirable and prestigious disciplines, such as law, psychology, medicine, computer

science and economics. Because the planning echelon of that period felt that the

economy's needs in these fields was limited, the number of student places was likewise

limited in conformity with projected needs. The fourth factor that led to the development

of academic colleges was the rapid increase in the number of students at the universities –

8% – four times higher than the annual growth rate of the population.19 Growing public

expenditures on higher education were the fifth factor that came into play. The national

expenditure per full-time student20 in Israel was high at the time ($11,100) compared with

other countries.21 All of these factors culminated in the decision to develop academic

colleges whose cost of maintenance as teaching facilities would be a third lower than that

of expanding the universities. A decision of the Council for Higher Education was

supported by Israeli government decision and by a legal amendment passed by the

Knesset.

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Thus, starting in the mid-1990s and over the course of a decade, Israel’s higher

education system doubled in size and absorbed nearly one out of every two (42%)

members of the high school graduate cohort, compared with one out of every five at the

beginning of the 1990s, due mainly to the development of the academic colleges. The

following table illustrates the change in access to higher education:

(To the editor: the structure of the table is not in right order – first in the left is the YEAR

and than the SIZE of CHORT than the % eligible…and the last one is % ENROLLED –

ami volansky)

Table 2: Percentage of Students Admitted for First-Year Academic Study, Per Age

Cohort*** (1949-2004)

% enrolled in institutions of higher education, per cohort

% eligible for matriculation certificate, per cohort

Size of cohort Year

1.6 6.7 *11,902 1949

11.6 14.2 25,032 1960

17.8 20 52,900 1970

21.3 21.3 65,500 1980

22.9 34.7 85,000 1990

36.2 42 106,300 2000

42.1 49.2 113,000** 2006

Source: data of the Central Bureau of Statistics and the CHE.

*Jews only

**Median age cohort 20-24

*** Does not include students enrolled in the Open University.

The rapid growth of the higher education system also had a swift impact on the quality of

teaching and learning within the system. Governmental funding in institutional budgets,

particularly those of the universities, was cut by 20%; the senior faculty/student ratio,

which in the mid-1990s was 1:16, had reached 1:25 by 2006; the opening of branches of

foreign institutions in Israel; the establishment of nine new private institutions; an

increase in the number of public colleges, and an overall rise in the number of institutions

to 65 in 2007 . The structural change have produced an effect opposite to that anticipated

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- intensified competition which led to lowering academic quality rather than enhancing

it. Criticism of academic quality and frequent budgetary crises, particularly in the

universities, gained momentum and led to the creation of a governmental commission

that, in 2007, formulated recommendations intended to improve the state of affairs.

These recommendations included returning the budget to its 2001 level; raising student

tuition by fifty percent; expanding the support system for students from the lower rungs

of the socioeconomic ladder; merging existing colleges; recruiting new faculty staff

means of enhancing instructional and research quality; defining the universities as the

exclusive venues of research and the colleges as institutions geared solely toward

academic teaching and external quality control system.22

The commission’s recommendations, which will be coming up for government approval

in early 2008, are controversial. While the universities regard the recommendations as a

potential lifeline, two other factions oppose them: the students, who are unwilling to pay

higher tuition, and the colleges, which are unwilling to see research defined as an area of

activity in which their instructional personnel have no part. All of the stakeholders are

gearing up for the coming battle.

Special Issues

A. The Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) sector

Up until the early 1990s, the percentage of Israeli pupils studying in the Haredi sector

was 6%. This figure began to increase in the early 1990s, and by 2006 about a quarter

(25.6%) of Israel's Jewish primary education population was Haredi. Main features of

education in the Haredi school sector include the non-“state” status but enjoyed a public

funding of most of its expenses; a focus on religious studies with minimal attention to

secular subjects; a sense of alienation from the state, and a tendency to shirk civic duties.

This situation has two main consequences: firstly, many young people who graduate

from the Haredi education system find it difficult to gain admittance to institutions of

higher education, due to an inadequate education background in secular subjects; and

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secondly, this population has obstacles taking its place in the labor force. In a study that

was conducted with unemployed Haredim, the latter identified their lack of background

in English, mathematics and computer studies as factors preventing them from finding

work.23 Their limited potential for labor force participation partly explains why a high

percentage of Haredim live under the poverty line, and why a high percentage of Israeli

children living in poverty belong to this growing sector.

Despite awareness on the part of the Haredi spiritual leadership of the

community’s severe economic plight, and despite increasing calls from within the

population, particularly women, to permit secular studies for the purpose of ensuring

family livelihoods, the formula has yet to be found that will enable hundreds of thousands

of Haredi pupils to study secular subjects at the level and scope needed in order to earn a

living. To a great degree the issue is in the hands of the Haredi leadership, but it is not

their province exclusively. The state has means available to it for generating a new kind

of dialogue, one capable of striking a new balance between the Haredi sector's curricular

structure and the budgetary support that the state provides to Haredi educational

institutions.

B. The Arab sector

The educational disparities that exist between Israel’s Jewish and Arab populations date

back to the pre-state period. Jewish organizations were established during the 19th and

early 20th centuries to promote Hebrew education in Palestine (Elboim-Dror, 1986).

Differences in strength of leadership and budgeting policies led to disparities as early as

the British Mandate period, and their effects were felt during the early years of Israel’s

existence. For example, in 1935 only “20% of Muslim children aged 5-15, versus 80% of

Jewish and Christian children,” were enrolled in educational institutions.24 During the

years of Israel's existence the gaps have narrowed continually. For instance, in 2006 the

percentage of those enrolled in Grade 12 in the Jewish sector was 93%, compared with

83% in the Arab sector.25

Another issue relevant to Jewish-Arab educational gaps is that of the strength of

the local authorities. The Arab local authorities’ limited economic capabilities make it

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difficult to collect local rate and to establish complementary educational services.

Although the government pays teacher salaries and funds for most educational services.

The 1980s witnessed a turning point in governmental policy toward the Arab

sector. The government initiated five-year plans to eliminate the deep disparities

between the Jewish and Arab sectors. The plans had an “affirmative action” orientation

that called for increased investment in Arab education. Although discrepancies between

planning and implementation still exist, there has been a gradual trend toward closing the

gaps on all measures of inequality. The percentage of school-aged Arabs enrolled in

study frameworks has grown faster than that of school-aged Jews; there has been a

significant increase in the percentage of Arab pupils eligible for the matriculation

certificate; the percentage of Arabs studying in institutions of higher education has

grown, although it is still low relative to the Arab presence in the overall population;

during the 1990s priority was given to school construction in the Arab sector; and, no less

importantly, in 2003 a new formula was determine for the allocation of teaching hours,

giving precedence to the Arab sector over the Jewish one. These corrective measures

reached their height in 2007 when the Education Ministry made a politically charged and

publicly contentious decision to allow the events of 1948 and their implications for

Palestinian society to be taught in accordance with the Israeli Arab community’s

traditional narrative. The sensitivity surrounding this authorization is rooted in the fact

that, while Israel’s achievement of statehood – the establishment of a Jewish national

home in Eretz Israel – constituted a tremendous achievement for the Jewish people, for

the region’s Arab inhabitants it occasioned a collective trauma, the “Nakba,” inasmuch as

many of them left for neighboring countries in the wake of Israel’s declaration of

independence.

Another issue is that of the development of an Arab educational leadership. From

the time of Israel’s founding until 1987 education in the Arab sector was administered by

Jewish position holders. This had consequences for the development of a senior Arab

leadership in the educational sphere, and for the degree to which the sector’s educational

needs were actually addressed. The Ministry of Education’s administrative dominance

and its exertion of pedagogical authority in nearly all areas of the education system, This

reality led, unintentionally, to a stifling of any original thought that might have

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encouraged the development of a professional leadership capable of adapting pedagogical

programs to Arab-sector needs. This dependence, though it did in some cases generate

educational initiatives, nevertheless compromised the Arab-sector leadership’s ability to

come up with creative programs.

In contrast to this stifling effect of the centralized educational leadership, recent

years have seen the emergence of an intelligentsia that has left its mark at every point of

the educational map to which it has traveled: inspectors, school principals, professional

online forums; graduate students in education. These individuals have demonstrated

professional awareness and a higher degree of administrative ability than anything seen

heretofore in the Arab educational sphere. A critical perspective; educational innovation;

needs-assessment capability; a broad educational background; professional leadership

ability – all of these attributes have been increasingly evident since the late 1990s in

encounters with the new cadre of Arab educators. The paradox of this leadership lies in

the fact that it is still trapped in a dependent relationship, with the ideas coming from the

Jewish sector. This sense of dependence is still having a paralytic effect and is rendering

largely useless the vision, original thinking, talents, pedagogical initiative and courage of

the new intelligentsia. At present, midway through the first decade of the 21st century,

Israeli Arabs’ potential for social integration at middle-class status depends more on the

sector’s professional leadership and its determination to drive educational initiatives

aimed at eliminating disparities, than it does on the establishment itself. Recent years

have, unquestionably, witnessed a turning point: philanthropic initiatives to raise funds

for education institutes; the establishment of organizations to improve school

performance; initiatives on the part of numerous local authorities to increase the

percentage of pupils eligible for the matriculation certificate; an impressive rise in the

percentage of Israeli Arabs studying in institutions of higher education (Volansky 2005,

2006). More than at any time in the past, the Arab sector seems to be aware that the way

to upgrade its status in Israeli society is to focus on quality education. The Arab

leadership has a decisive role to play in ensuring the continued development of this trend.

C. The teacher crisis

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The key to the current teacher crisis in Israel is the teaching profession’s relative

undesirability, to which several factors have contributed over the years. Firstly, various

occupational alternatives to teaching have emerged that are considerably more attractive

to young people. These alternatives sectors include finance, insurance, tourism,

recreational/leisure services, information and communication technology, complementary

medicine. Another factor is the harsh public criticism to which the education system is

subjected, and the prevailing negative image of the teacher. Articles by key figures in

Israeli society that portray the Israeli teacher as a “failure,” and crude insults to the

profession on the part of public leaders have caused this image to become ingrained in

the public mind and have deterred young people to join the teaching profession. A third

factor is the expanded sphere of individual, parental and pupil rights which, albeit

unintentionally, has undermined the teacher’s authority. Fourthly: teacher salaries.

Salaries have eroded to the point where teachers are relying on National Insurance

income supports in order to achieve a mandatory minimum income – or taking on

additional jobs beyond their professional teaching positions. A fifth factor is the trend

that developed during the the first decade of the 21th century toward a shorter school day

(14% on average), which indirectly contributed to a heavier teacher burden. And sixthly,

intensifying public critiques with Israel’s performance on international tests.

All of these factors have caused demand for teaching as an academic study

discipline in Israel’s teacher training colleges and universities to decline. In 2006 the

discipline demand breakdown in Israel’s 27 academic teacher-training institutions was as

follows:

Table 3: First-Year Student Enrollment in Primary Education Programs at Teacher

Training Colleges – 2006-2007

Subject No. of students enrollment (State education)

No. of students enrollment (State religious education)

No. of students enrollment (Arab sector)

History 0 0 0

Judaism 13 22 0

Bible 7 119 0

18

Talmud 0 20 0 Hebrew language 4 0 0

Hebrew literature 4 0 1 Geography 0 0 0

Israel studies 0 0 1

English 45 3 35

Arabic 0 0 50

Science 45 4 0 Mathematics 87 50 33 Source: Training Teacher Division, Ministry of Education, 2007.

The low student enrollments in teacher training programs explains, at least in part, the

current teacher crisis in Israel.

Conclusion

Israel’s education system is faced with several challenges. The first and most visible of

these challenge is the teaching profession’s lack of demand. Cumulative damage to the

image of the teacher; changes in the Israeli economy’s employment structure, including

the rise of higher-status and better-paid occupational sectors; the growing complexity of

the teacher’s job, and the higher median age of the teacher population – all of these things

have led to a situation in which only profound change will draw young people with

cultural/educational capital and personal charisma to the Israeli education system’s forty-

five thousand classrooms. A second challenge relates to the clear choice of a pedagogic

strategy. Over its years of existence, the Israeli education system’s standards have

traditionally revolved around the matriculation exams administered at the end of Grade

12. However, the permeation of high-stake testing at all educational levels, including the

early-childhood level, has created a situation rife with contradictions. Those who support

this approach view it as a major, if not the sole, tool for improving scholastic

performance throughout the country. Critics see it as harmful to knowledge-building

processes and cultivation of mind by development of thinking skills, and consider it to be

a return to mechanistic and formal teaching methods. Those who oppose the

standardization process see in the development of ICT a golden opportunity to create

challenging new teaching methods relevant to the pupils’ world, and they feel that the

19

education system must under no circumstances waste its chance to incorporate

information and communication technologies into the teaching and learning process.

Hence, today’s great challenge is that of choosing a clear pedagogic strategy capable of

resolving the existing contradiction.

A third challenge is also connected to the pedagogical sphere: the need to enable

the lower fifty percent of the pupil population to complete 12 years of schooling, based

on curricula that will function as a “ladder” to advancement and give these pupils the

requisite background for tertiary education. In order for this to happen, there has to be

choice and variety and flexibility in the curricular structure, as in the ideology of variety

that came to prominence in the late 1970s – an ideology at odds with the current trend

toward a monolithic, academically-oriented system founded on a back to basics approach

that favors the upper fifty percent of the population. Unless a different attitude is taken

toward curricular structure at the secondary level, it will be difficult to ensure equal

opportunity for tertiary education to tens of thousands of high school graduates.

A fourth challenge lies in the Haredi sector. The continual growth of this

population, which now accounts for a quarter of all pupils in the Jewish sector and which

focuses primarily on religious studies at the expense of secular subjects, is responsible for

the plight of the Haredim themselves, who are largely unable to integrate into the labor

force. This in turn dooms the Haredim to economic distress, with most of the

population’s children living under the poverty line; it also keeps the state from increasing

the percentage of its citizens who participate in the labor market (the Israeli figure is 10%

lower than that of most developed countries).26 Any effort in this area will entail new

definitions for the relationship between the state and the Haredi community, definitions

capable of encouraging and supporting secular studies within this sector, if only in certain

and minimum core disciplines essential for their integration into the labor market.

A fifth challenge is that of formulating an education budget capable of addressing

the system’s various other challenges. The budget cuts that Israel’s education system has

absorbed over the last few years have led to larger class sizes, fewer weekly class hours, a

heavier burden on the teacher, a loss of pedagogical flexibility in the schools, a cessation

of the trend toward school autonomy and self-management, and fewer resources for

advancing disadvantaged populations, including the Arab sector. These are the

20

challenges faced by the Israeli education system in the middle of the first decade of the

21st century.

21

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1 Czapski, G., & Ilan, Y. (2004) International Status of Israeli Research: A Comparative

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3 http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnatonhnew_site.htm (Hebrew)

4 http://www.mof.gov.il/budget2008/pdf/scira_macro.ppt#1 (Hebrew) 5 http://www.cbs.gov.il/publications/isr_in_n06h.pdf (Hebrew) 6 http://www1.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnatonhnew_site.htm (Hebrew) 7 http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=110457&contrassID=2&subContrassID=21&sbSubContrassID=0 (Hebrew) 8 http://www.cbs.gov.il/publications/expenditure_survey05/pdf/t03_2.pdf 9 Israeli legislators at the time were divided into two camps – those who attached importance to the age at which schooling was to end preferring that it continue until age 15 and who, due to limited resources, proposed that schooling begin at age 7, and those who attached special importance to pre-primary education, insisting that compulsory schooling begin at age 5. 10 The State of Israel was founded in May, 1948, while the Compulsory Education Law was enacted in September, 1949. 11 http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton.html?num_tab=st08_06&CYear=2007 12 Michaelovich, R. (1999). “Pre-Primary Education in Israel: the Development and Application of Varying Approaches,” in Peled, E. (ed.), Fifty Years of Israeli Education, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, pg. 80-859. (Hebrew) 13 Foreword of the Director General of the Ministry of Education, http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/A096CD1C-0204-458F-A6F1-4CC43C7641F5/45389/tochnitavoda08.pdf [quote not found in the foreword – Julie] (Hebrew) 14 http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/A096CD1C-0204-458F-A6F1-4CC43C7641F5/45389/tochnitavoda08.pdf (Hebrew) 15 Tsabar-Ben Yehoshua, N. and Zilberstein, M. (1999). From Uniformity to Diversity: Curriculum Development, pg. 194. (Hebrew) 16 Facts and Figures (2004): Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, pg. 43. (Hebrew) 17 Iram, Y., and M. Schmida, 1998. The Educational System of Israel. Westport, CO & London, Greenwood Press. 18 Drori, Y. (1999). “A Historical Overview of 50 Years of Education in Israel: Periods and Dilemmas," in Peled, E. (ed.), Fifty Years of Israeli Education, Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense, pg. 39-66. (Hebrew) 19 To ensure their stabilization at current levels through 2000. 20 Including tertiary and higher education. 21 22 http://www.che.org.il/download/files/shohat-report_e.pdf , pg. 23-29 (Hebrew). 23 Naon D., King, J., Wolde-Tsadick, A. (2006). Populations Not Fully Participating in the Labor Market:

Extent, Characteristics and Programs to Promote their Employment and Occupational Mobility. Jerusalem: Meyers-JDC-Brookdale Institute, pg. 36. (Hebrew) 24 Ibid, pg. 36.

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25 http://www.cbs.gov.il/reader/shnaton/templ_shnaton.html?num_tab=st08_07&Cyear=2007 26 http://www.cbs.gov.il/shnaton58/st28_04.pdf