Details on exactly how much money various school systems in Israel get from the Education Ministry were made public last week, and they show discrimination – in favor of haredi schools and Zionist Orthodox schools and against secular public schools and Arab-Israeli schools.
Government Gives Haredi And Zionist Orthodox Schools Much More Money Per Student Than Secular Jewish Public Schools, Arab Public Schools
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Details on exactly how much money various school systems in Israel get from the Education Ministry were made public last week, and they show discrimination – in favor of haredi schools and Zionist Orthodox schools and against secular public schools and Arab-Israeli schools, Ha’aretz reported.
The numbers that were released are from 2012. The data from 2014 is already in, but was wasn’t released – even though the discrimination has reportedly not been walked back under the supposedly anti-haredi Netanyahu-Lapid-Livni-Lieberman coalition government.
Primary school students in the private school yeshiva networks run by the Sefardi haredi Shas Party and the Ashkenazi haredi United Torah Judaism Party get more money per pupil than the state secular public schools do – meaning the state public schools, which teach the country’s core curriculum, get less funding than haredi yeshivas that do not. And those haredi schools are not properly inspected by the state, meaning their compliance with the law is even worse than is officially documented.
The details (4 shekels = $1):
• Primary school students in Zionist Orthodox public schools were funded at the rate of 15,391 shekels each.
• Haredi primary school students in Shas and UTJ schools were funded at the rate of 14,013 shekels each.
• But primary schools in the Arab-Israeli community got only 13,864 shekels per student.
• Secular public school students got the lowest funding at 13,196 shekels per student. That means the state’s largest public school network is also the worst funded, with schools getting 6% less per student each year than haredi schools get per pupil and 15% less than what Zionist Orthodox public schools get per student.
• Poor Arab-Israeli primary school children get less funding than poor Jewish primary school children.
• Poor and near-poor Arab-Israeli high school students get 42% less Education Ministry funding than Jewish high school students from the same economic situation: Arab-Israeli students get 18,200 shekels, Jewish students get 31,900 shekels.
• Working class and middle class Arab high school students get funded at the rate of 14,800 shekels each – 27% less funding than Jewish high school students with same economic situation, who are funded at the rate of 20,500 shekels each.
• High school students at Zionist Orthodox high schools are funded at 27,600 shekels each – 15% more than students at Israel’s secular public high schools get.
• 89% of state funding per child goes to pay for teaching. The cost of teaching was highest highest in haredi and Zionist Orthodox schools, which may mean the students have more classroom hours. But it can also mean teachers are better paid or a combination of both reasons, or it could even indicate fraud.
• But the Education Ministry also gave local municipalities more funding for educational equipment and services when it was earmarked for haredi or Zionist Orthodox students.
• Haredi schools are supposed to be funded based on how much of the core curriculum they actually teach. However, in practice the Education Ministry is unable to do proper inspections of these schools and many schools who are compliant or somewhat compliant on paper and not at all compliant with the law in reality – a fact the Education Ministry well knows.
Ha’aretz reports that the results of this skewed funding policy are evident across the board in every category imaginable and measurable, from matriculation exam results, international test results and national Meitzav educational standards test results. All of them show that the Education Ministry “has failed to close gaps and educate Israeli students as befits a Western nation,” Ha’aretz reported.
State funding for the Shas and UTJ haredi schools was made part of a 1991 coalition agreement during a crisis in Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s Likud Party government. Funding for other private haredi schools that comped with UTJ and Shas was slashed while funding for the Shas and UTJ schools was anchored in law and would be funded on a par with “the rest of Israel’s children.”
But they’re actually better-funded than regular public schools, and all attempts to force these haredi schools to teach secular core subjects or otherwise comply with the law have failed.
Former Finance Minister Yair Lapid, who was fired by Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, and former Education Minister Rabbi Shai Piron, a member of Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party who resigned from the government after Netanyahu fired Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, both tried to get haredi schools to teach the core curriculum and comply with the law, and they also tried to reduce funding to haredi schools.
And under Piron, the Education Ministry discovered serious misuse of public money by Shas schools and major management there.
As a result, the state was going to cut 25% of the Shas schools’ budget.
But Lapid gave up when he found out that even though there was major mismanagement and misuse of public funds, the only way for him to cut the funding to Shas schools was to amend a clause in a fundamental budgetary law from 1992 – a near impossibility, especially when Israel’s prime minister was actively courting haredi political parties to have them enter his coalition government as the replacements for Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party.