Volansky the israeli education system (english 22007)
1. 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
1
2. 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 threefold 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
2
3. 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
3
4. 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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5. 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
5
6. 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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7. 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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8. 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 mid1990s. On the one hand, the overall percentage of Israeli pupils eligible for the
8
9. 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
1949**
1960
Size of Cohort*
12,000
25,000
% of Cohort Members
Enrolled in Grade 12
6.7
27
% of Cohort Members
Eligible for the
Matriculation Certificate
at the End of Grade 12
1.6
14.2
9
10. 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.
10
11. 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.
11
12. 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
% eligible for
Size of cohort
institutions of
matriculation
higher education,
certificate, per
per cohort
cohort
1.6
6.7
*11,902
11.6
14.2
25,032
17.8
20
52,900
21.3
21.3
65,500
22.9
34.7
85,000
36.2
42
106,300
42.1
49.2
113,000**
Source: data of the Central Bureau of Statistics and the CHE.
Year
1949
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2006
*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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13. - 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
13
14. 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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15. 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
15
16. 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
16
17. 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
History
Judaism
Bible
No. of students No. of students
enrollment (State enrollment (State
religious
education)
education)
0
0
13
22
7
119
No.
of
students
enrollment
(Arab sector)
0
0
0
17
18. Talmud
Hebrew language
Hebrew literature
Geography
Israel studies
English
Arabic
Science
Mathematics
0
4
4
0
0
45
0
45
87
20
0
0
0
0
3
0
4
50
0
0
1
0
1
35
50
0
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 fortyfive 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
18
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
19
20. challenges faced by the Israeli education system in the middle of the first decade of the
21st century.
20
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1
2
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
:
Czapski, G., & Ilan, Y. (2004) International Status of Israeli Research: A Comparative
Analysis Using Scientometric Indices, Neeman Institute, Technion, Haifa, p. 2
Source: http://ed.sjtu/edu/cn/ranking/htm
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)
3
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-A6F14CC43C7641F5/45389/tochnitavoda08.pdf [quote not found in the foreword – Julie] (Hebrew)
14
http://cms.education.gov.il/NR/rdonlyres/A096CD1C-0204-458F-A6F14CC43C7641F5/45389/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
20
21
To ensure their stabilization at current levels through 2000.
Including tertiary and higher education.
22
http://www.che.org.il/download/files/shohat-report_e.pdf , pg. 23-29 (Hebrew).
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.
23
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