Educational Injustice

Israel’s school system is plagued by inequality between students based on class, ethnicity and national identity.  Nationwide and international achievement tests consistently show that these gaps are among the highest in the OECD. Disparities can also be seen in matriculation eligibility rates across different localities throughout the country.  What’s more, eligibility rates for matriculation strongly correlate with the socio-economic ranking of the locality in which students reside.  Not surprisingly, eligibility is highest in Jewish localities with a primarily Ashkenazi population, affluent and highly educated. Below them are predominantly Mizrahi Jewish localities with less educated and lower income residents. At the bottom of the list, with few exceptions, are Arab localities.  Israel has the largest gaps in the OECD – i.e., the widest distribution of scores between the country’s weakest and strongest students.

One reason for these gaps is that the government’s resource allocation is not differential. Consequently, students from disadvantaged backgrounds fail to receive the budgetary support necessary for equal educational opportunity. Achievement gaps also reflect disparities between education budgets between different local authorities.  Annual expenditures on education of municipalities in the highest socio-economic cluster is more than twenty times higher than the expenditure on education in communities from the lowest cluster. Another factor is inequality in private spending on education. Since, for example, parents’ ability to hire private tutors is a function of their disposable income, economic gaps consistently translate into educational gaps.

In addition to allocating educational resources unfairly, the Israeli school system classifies and channels students into different tracks of varying quality.  As sociologist Shlomo Swirski shows in his book “Land of Separate Tracks,” this leads to economic stratification based on national and ethnic origin.  From the earliest grades, students are divided into groups that determine their future educational path. Those from more affluent backgrounds are placed in an academic high school track, leading to a matriculation certificate that opens university doors.  Those from disadvantaged backgrounds are steered towards an inferior vocational track characterized by lower rates of eligibility for matriculation and matriculation certificates of lower quality. Tracking is cloaked in a “meritocratic” ideology which claims, disingenuously, that children are separated into groups based on knowledge, skills and preferences. This system has no scientific or moral justification.  Another strategy affluent groups use to maintain their advantage is educational separatism.  This includes opposing school integration, refusing to send their children to integrated schools and conducting legal battles against integration policies.  It also includes “segregation within integration” (creating separate frameworks for Mizrahi and Ashkenazi students within the shared school space), and opposition to differential resource allocation policies that would benefit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Additional tactics that should be mentioned include the establishment of special schools, tracks, and classes that are largely characterized by student selection; and charging additional fees for educational services.

The current Omnibus Arrangements Law (a supplementary budget law commonly passed by the Knesset) will further promote the creation of separate educational tracks of varying quality.   The law proposes to strengthen vocational training at technological colleges recognized by the government’s Institute of Technological Training and Education (MAHAT). The main target constituency for this proposal is ultra-Orthodox men, but studies cited by Dr. Shani Bar-On Maman and Tehila Sharabi, researchers from the Adva Center, show that technological training offers relatively low returns compared to education acquired in academic colleges and universities, and graduates of technological colleges are channeled into the lower tier of the labor market. As these researchers note, one of the law’s objectives is to weaken institutions that provide comprehensive general education including science and computer studies, English, and education relevant to democratic citizenship and the ability to adapt to future technological changes.

Educational inequality is also reflected in the low percentage of first generation college students, those whose parents never went to college. A 2023 study by the Central Bureau of Statistics showed the likelihood of children to parents without higher education to study in colleges is half that of children whose parents have an academic degree. Their chances of studying at universities (as opposed to colleges) is one-third compared to children whose parents have an academic degree, and in prestigious faculties such as medical schools – one-tenth (Yamini, Arnon, Mizrachi 2023). The vast majority of “first generation” students in Israel do not belong to identity categories that qualify them for budget allocation or support (such as Arabs, ultra-Orthodox, and Ethiopian immigrants and their children). First-generation students in higher education, especially those in prestigious tracks, do not get the support they need from their families, their communities or the educational institutions where they study. Typically, they are older than students whose parents have academic degrees, grew up in low-income families, belong to ethnic minority groups, are immigrants or the children of immigrants (Efrat Ben Shoshan Gazit, Hila Dayan 2021).

Special education students are a particularly vulnerable group. According to Ministry of Education data, close to 5% of children in Israeli schools study in separate special education frameworks, a higher rate than in the Western world. A 2018 reform that sought to integrate more special education students into regular schools led to the opposite result – more parents chose special education frameworks for their children after it became clear that children would not receive adequate support in regular schools. Currently, about 60% of special education students are integrated into regular frameworks, and 40% study in separate schools. The field of special education in Israel suffers from a major shortage of para-medical therapists, limited space in special education frameworks due to lack of buildings and staff, and insufficient training for integration assistants. Education minister Yoav Kish recently added a new special committee on special education to a long line of previous committees that have discussed the issue over the years

The principle of equal opportunity in education, a fundamental element of social justice, is necessary for social mobility and therefore vital to the health of modern, democratic societies.   Israeli schools, however, do not operate in isolation from the broader social, economic, cultural, and political environment. Socio-economic factors outside of the school have a profound impact on education.  For instance, Israel’s child poverty rate is second only to Turkey among OECD countries, severely limiting the possibility of achieving true equality in education.   Catchphrases such as “whoever makes the effort can succeed” ignore the decisive impact economic factors have on one’s chances of success, and legitimize an unequal socio-economic order.  It is no coincidence that countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel— all places with high rates of child poverty and inequality in wealth and income relative to other Western countries— also suffer from educational inequality.

Separate and Different Education and Funding

Israeli schools are divided into three categories: public schools, including state and state-religious schools, which receive government funding; recognized but unofficial educational institutions; and unofficial, recognized institutions that are exempt from regulations binding other schools.  Some Haredi schools fall into the category of recognized but unofficial institutions. Schools in this category must teach at least 75% of the government-mandated core curriculum. In return, they receive 75% of the budget to which a regular state school is entitled.  Exempt schools receive students whom the Minister of Education has exempted from attending schools in the other two categories.  These institutions implement a limited state-mandated curriculum and receive at least 55% of the budget to which a regular state school is entitled.  Despite multiple Supreme Court rulings that Haredi educational institutions must teach core subjects, supervision is deficient. Additionally, Haredi educational institutions belonging to the independent education network regularly discriminate against students of Sephardic origin.  A Supreme Court ruling that such discrimination must cease led to massive protests from the Haredi population against the ruling.  Sadly, discrimination against Sephardic and Ethiopian students persists in the independent education network.

The 2023 coalition agreements, arrangement laws and budget will only compound the problem. Among other things, they seek to put Haredi schools on the same footing with official schools. This will afford them larger budgets without requiring them to teach core subjects or end discrimination against Sephardic and Ethiopian students.  The core curriculum is a matter of considerable significance.  Despite its limited scope in Israel’s education system, it still provides essential tools for participation the job market and basic foundations for democratic citizenship, while empowering students to determine their own life path.

The abovementioned agreements and laws also limit the government’s ability to supervise Haredi institutions and impose sanctions in cases of discrimination or other legal violations.  Until now, Haredi institutions have operated under the authority of the Haredi section of the Ministry of Education. The new laws terminate this arrangement and grant Haredi schools the autonomy to supervise themselves. They also grant Haredi schools preferential treatment relative to official schools (state and state-religious) in terms of student transportation funding and class size. The coalition agreements state that Haredi schools will be subject to all the collective agreements signed with teacher unions, and that they will benefit from all the programs and benefits enjoyed by official schools. Thus, while official schools will be subject to close management and curricular supervision, Haredi schools will be exempt from any limitations, except those they impose on themselves. In the name of social justice and democratic values, liberal societies give clear priority to public education funding. Thus, for example, a capitalist state like the United States funds private educational institutions with public money at a rate of 10%. Other developed countries fund them at a rate of 50%, conduct strict supervision and ensure that they teach the core curriculum (basic subjects), that teachers are employed under the same conditions as public school teachers, and that they have appropriate qualifications. Additionally, schools may not discriminate in student admissions.

Meanwhile, coalition agreements with the Religious Zionist Party provide complete funding of private or semi-private schools even if they teach only 75% of the core curriculum. Under the agreements, state and state-religious schools will receive full government funding even if they select students and charge fees.   This will strengthen the quasi-private schools and severely harm public education. The impact will be felt directly by students from lower-middle-class families who remain in public schools while students from higher-income families transfer to selective, quasi-private schools. Other sections of the coalition agreements with the Religious Zionist Party significantly increase the budgets for state-religious schools compared to regular state schools. It is important to note that separatism and segregation are central characteristics of some state-religious schools. In 2013, the Council for Religious State Education decided that parents of students from grade four onward would have the option to change the character of their school and create gender-separate classes. This trend is spreading among state-religious schools. This is generally attributed to changing religious attitudes among parents and the “Haredization” of the religious Zionist community.  However, research (Friedman 2013, Ben Shachar, Berger 2014, Shir 2014) indicates that gender separation policies are not only the result of “Haredization” but also the desire to create selective schools that exclude disadvantaged groups, especially children of Ethiopian and Sephardic origin. The upshot is government support for an educational stream that encourages economic and ethnic segregation.

The Zionist-religious education system takes the liberty to operate its schools in line with its own values and culture.  Its schools increasingly gender separation policies and strict, orthodox religious observance. These trends express a vision of citizenship dictated by their religious-political ideology. By contrast, the vast majority of secular schools in the state system are oblivious to the political nature of the educational act. “The political” is mistakenly identified as “partisan,” a manifestation of narrow, factional interests that should be kept out of the classroom.

Fear – or lack of awareness — of the political nature of education do not make secular state schools apolitical, despite how they perceive themselves.  Rather, the system unconsciously replicates and preserves the existing order, with all its injustices. Most schools avoid controversial discussions in the classroom, civic education is usually taught only in civics lessons, and critical pedagogy is the domain of only a few schools. Thus, while the Haredim and the national-religious community demonstrate political awareness and actively ensure that their schools inculcate their culture and values, the secular state education system lacks active political consciousness. Denial and lack of awareness of the “political” has turned secular education into a passive platform where a conservative, nationalist, and neoliberal agenda predominates, appearing as natural, normal, and universal. In today’s secular state education system, it is almost impossible to find critical pedagogy and a comprehensive worldview of social justice that seeks to guarantee social rights, reduce inequality, and expand social solidarity. Most “values-based” education in the secular system revolves around a narrow concept of charity—Good Deeds Day, volunteerism, and “helping the weak”—or a thin pluralistic agenda of superficial and asymmetrical exposure to a variety of views and social groups. The situation is even worse in Arab schools. Civic education is caught in contradictions with political, economic, and social reality, as Arab educators try to teach democracy, freedom, and equality in a society that discriminates against one-fifth of the citizens. One way to avoid these contradictions is to avoid political education and democratic civic education altogether.

In May 2023 two proposed laws that would increase security oversight of Arab schools and teachers passed their preliminary reading in the Knesset.  These laws, which received the support of the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, would deepen the involvement of the Shin Bet (internal security service) in examining the security background of Arab teachers.  They would also make it easier to fire those deemed to have “identified with a terrorist organization,” a vague term with no clear definition. It opens the door for discrimination against teachers — especially Arabs — who express opposition to government policies such as military operations in the occupied territories. These laws will also have a chilling effect, leading some teachers to avoid discussing politically controversial topics in the classroom. The danger they pose to democratic political education were clearly visible when a teacher in Rishon Lezion was called before a disciplinary hearing before firing after holding a class discussion with students on the significance of the judicial overhaul. Following widespread public protest, the disciplinary hearing was canceled and the teacher returned to his job.

Different streams in Israeli education also receive differential allocation of resources. Due to their unique political and ideological nature, religious and ultra-Orthodox schools enjoy supplementary budgets that are not given to secular Jewish and Arab education.  This leads to inequalities and denies Israeli students, especially those in the secular stream, an appropriate political education based on democratic citizenship in a multicultural society.

From the outset, as researcher Orit Ichilov has shown, civic education has served as a platform for imparting nationalistic values. The government’s judicial overhaul, aimed at weakening Israel’s democratic institutions, demonstrates how shallow the discourse on citizenship is. Despite the existence of a uniform curriculum based on universal citizenship, the concept of citizenship remains sectorial, differential, and discriminatory. The fact that citizens are unable to find common ground or work together and that large but marginalized parts of society cannot identify with protests against the judicial overhaul underscore the failure of the country’s citizenship curriculum. Israel requires a civic education curriculum that views citizenship as a political concept, one that aims to produce political citizens. It should encourage lively debate on controversial issues. It should make civil society a platform for discussion and disagreement, not seek a false consensus that pushes less powerful groups to the margins.

As part of the coalition agreements, Avi Maoz – an extreme, right wing politician from the Noam party — was appointed Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office and will head the “Authority for Jewish Identity,” with a budget of NIS 285 million. Maoz will have authority over some 23,000 external programs — those that schools may purchase from authorized providers with a total budget of NIS 2 billion. Thus, a minister with racist, sexist, and homophobic views will have the authority to censor and disqualify those that do not align with his worldview. This coalition agreement, it should be noted, contradicts Israel’s education law which assigns curriculum-related powers exclusively to the Ministry of Education.

To be fair, problematic gender policies predate the current right-wing coalition. Israeli governments have rarely allocated resources to developing a gender perspective, removing barriers, or promoting gender equality in schools. Schools teach in a way that reflects patriarchal foundations.  This is true in all educational spaces, such as language, visual representations, and social relations. Examples include the unconscious gender tracking of boys and young men into science, technology, engineering and math, and of young women into the humanities; or dress codes that embed control and regulation of the students’ sexuality and bodies. Most Israeli schools in deep pedagogical crisis, one for which both right-wing and left-wing governments are responsible. And since the country’s educational workforce is largely female, women pay the price of chronic personnel shortages, accumulated exhaustion from reforms, lack of parental trust in the system, inadequate salaries, feelings of alienation, and largescale abandonment of the teaching profession.  The blindness of Israeli schools is manifest not only in gender issues but also in matters of  ethnicity, class, nationality, and sexual preference. The neoliberal perspective underlying the schools’ educational mission shapes the student as an individual, training him or her for life in the free market. This perspective masks the ability to see students within broader social contexts, as individuals growing and acting within economic, cultural, and national identity structures.

While the coalition agreements stand to fund misogynistic and nationalist educational programs, the Ministry of Education has done almost nothing over the years to implement the “Report of the Biton Committee for Strengthening the Heritage of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry in the Education System.” The committee, led by poet Erez Biton, was established by Minister of Education Naftali Bennett in 2016 to examine what was lacking in the teaching of the culture and history of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry and to offer recommendations for change. The committee found, as previous research has shown, that the curriculum in Israeli schools is predominantly Eurocentric and tends to sideline the culture and history of Mizrahi Jews. The committee recommended that strengthening Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish heritage be considered a national task.  It called for Mizrachi representation in key institutions that determine educational policy, changing curricula in subjects like history, philosophy, and literature, strengthening the Arabic language, and allocating 250 million shekels over five years for these purposes. To date, almost none of these recommendations have been implemented. Instead, the coalition agreements with the Religious Zionist party, Noam, and the ultra Orthodox Shas allocate large sums of money for religious indoctrination and “strengthening Jewish identity.”

Another sign that bodes ill for educational justice is the appointment of Avital Ben Shlomo, a member of the “Kohelet Forum,” as deputy director-general of the Ministry of Education. Ben Shlomo helped author the forum’s educational policy papers which call for adopting  Republican, conservative, and capitalist educational practices in Israel. They include weakening public education, privatization, and subjecting schools to the rules of the marekt.

The Supreme Court, it should be noted, has repeatedly ruled in favor of privatization in the school system and upheld educational injustice.  In the case of Jacqueline Shimson, for example, the Court approved parent fees for a wide range of educational services, thus turning the right to free education into a dead letter.  In another example, the Court stated that “the State of Israel cannot afford to sacrifice the islands of excellence and the aspiration to excellence for the sake of the principle of equality in education,” something that would put Israel at an educational disadvantage compared to developed countries. In the spirit of its ruling, the Court creates a factually and morally flawed identification between educational excellence and social and economic status, ignoring the fact that children have potential to excel even if their families struggling to pay school fees.  The poor performance of Israeli students by international standards is due to educational inequality, not the suppression of “islands of excellence.”   In fact, students lead international rankings for egalitarian achievement in egalitarian education systems like Finland.

Recommendations:

• Revoke clauses in the coalition agreements that violate the principle of equal educational opportunities by granting excessive sectorial benefits to religious state schools, ultra-Orthodox schools, and semi-private secular schools that charge parent fees.
• Institute a compensatory policy of investing more resources in students from underprivileged backgrounds, allocating more teaching hours, assigning quality teachers, facilitating small group learning, and creating integration between student groups from different social and economic strata.
• Provide free early childhood education (from ages 0 to 3), which would include more children, particularly from underprivileged backgrounds, than those covered by the program presented this year by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
• Integrate those special education children who can participate in regular educational frameworks, while allocating the necessary resources and professional development for the pedagogical staff working with them.
• Ensure that children from low-income families have access to after-school and summer educational enrichment programs.
• Abolish segregated educational frameworks with selective admission practices that charge parent fees.
• Stop the privatization of the education system, including the privatization of educational services and the employment of education staff through temp agencies and service contractors. The alternative to privatizing the education system is not complete state control over education, but maximum democratization of the decision-making process, based on cooperation between all stakeholders impacted by those decisions: principals, teachers, parents, and students.
• Provide additional funding for joint educational frameworks where Mizrahi and Ashkenazi, religious and secular, Jewish and Arab students study together:  frameworks that help combat prejudices and stereotypes, remove social barriers, reduce anxiety about those who are different, and promote pluralism, equality, and solidarity.
• Mandate core studies for all students, teaching them to function as citizens in a democratic society, capable of shaping their own futures.
• Terminate the separation between academic and vocational schools, along with all other forms of segregation and tracking in the education system. All secondary schools in the country should teach a unified core curriculum.  They may offer technological tracks, provided that the variety of curricular options remains consistent across all schools.
• Promote a curriculum that allows all children to learn about their own culture and the culture of other children, in line with the recommendations of the Biton Committee.

Since economic and social inequality reproduce social stratification in the school system as well, educational justice requires that Israel pursue social and economic policies aimed at reducing inequality in society at large (recommendations on this matter appear in the Collective Paper on Social Justice).

Contributors to the writing: Prof. Yossi Dahan, Yifat Hillel, Dr. Gal Levi, Dr. Karni Gigi, Dr. Shlomit Benjamin.

Translated into English by Sam Shube.

List of Sources:

Report on “First-Generation University Students”, Prof. Miri Yamini, Prof. Inbal Arnon, Prof. Itzik Mizrahi, Israeli Young Academy (January 2023)
First-Generation, Dr. Hila Dayan and Efrat Ben-Shoshan-Gazit, Miftaḥ, Tel Aviv University (2021).