Israel's Education System: A Comprehensive Overview

Israel's commitment to education is deeply rooted in its history and values, recognizing it as a cornerstone for the future. The education system is designed to cultivate responsible citizens within a democratic, pluralistic society, fostering coexistence among diverse ethnic, religious, cultural, and political backgrounds. Grounded in Jewish values, love for the land, and principles of liberty and tolerance, the system strives to integrate a diverse population, promote equality, and maintain high academic standards.

Historical Context and Evolution

Since 1933, the Israeli education system has undergone significant transformations. The State Education Law of 1953 marked a pivotal moment, replacing disparate systems with a unified national framework. This framework encompasses public secular and Jewish religious schools, alongside Arab Christian, Arab Druze, and Arab Islamic schools. The latter were integrated following Israel's occupation of Arab territories in 1967. While the initial changes faced resistance from Arab students, the system largely normalized within a year, with modifications including the replacement of textbooks containing content critical of Jews, Zionism, or Israel.

The system has had the enormous challenge of integrating large numbers of immigrant children from over 70 countries thereby fulfilling Israel’s raison d’être as the historic homeland of the Jewish people. The mass immigration of the 1950s, mainly from postwar Europe and Arab countries, was succeeded in the 1960s by a large influx of Jews from North Africa. Since the beginning of the 1990s, over one million Jews from the former Soviet Union have come to Israel, with many more still arriving each year. In two mass movements, in 1984 and 1991, almost the entire Jewish community of Ethiopia was brought to the country.

Structure of the Education System

The Ministry of Education Culture and Sport oversees state and state-religious schools, while the Council for Higher Education regulates post-secondary education. The Council accredits higher education institutions and grants degree-awarding authority, serving a purpose similar to accreditation systems in the United States.

The structure of education until 1969 included eight years of primary education and four years of secondary education. Post-1969 to the present, as approved by Parliament, primary education now involves six years, followed by six years of secondary schooling.

The Israeli education system is structured into three tiers:

Primary Education: Grades 1-6 (approximately ages 6-12)
Middle School: Grades 7-9 (approximately ages 12-15)
High School: Grades 10-12 (approximately ages 15-18)

Compulsory education spans from kindergarten through 12th grade, with the academic year running from September to June.

Types of Schools

Israeli schools are categorized into four main tracks:

State-Secular (Mamlachti): The majority of Israeli children attend state schools.
State-Religious (Mamlachti Dati): Catering to Orthodox youth (mainly Religious Zionist/Modern Orthodox), these schools offer intensive Jewish studies and emphasize tradition.
Independent Religious (Haredi or Chinuch Atzmai): These schools prioritize Torah study with limited secular subjects.
Arab: Serving Arab, Christian Arab, Bedouin, and Druze students.

Private schools also exist, reflecting specific parental philosophies, such as democratic schools, or foreign curricula, like The American International School in Israel.

Primary Education in Detail

Compulsory education begins at age five, with many children attending kindergarten at ages three and four. While private kindergartens charge tuition, state schools are free. Since 1973, all primary schools offer a six-year compulsory program.

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The student populations in Arab and Jewish schools are segregated. As of 2002-2003, approximately 77 percent of primary students were enrolled in Jewish education and 23 percent in Arab education. Hebrew is the language of instruction for Jewish schools, while Arabic is used in Arab schools. Credentials are issued in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

The basic curriculum in Jewish and Arab schools is the same with the exception of second language instruction. In Arab schools, Hebrew is taught beginning in the third grade. Jewish students choose from English, Arabic or French in the sixth grade.

The Ministry sets the overall curriculum's content, but teaching methods are determined by the principal, teachers, and local authorities.

Secondary Education in Detail

Secondary education in Israel is based on European models, influenced by Eastern European immigration after World War II and Great Britain's earlier occupation of Palestine. Students are categorized into academic and vocational tracks during secondary education.

The last three years (grades ten through twelve) are not compulsory or free, although scholarships and financial aid are often available. In academic schools, students take general courses before specializing in their final two years. Vocational schools offer technical, maritime, domestic, or business studies. Agricultural schools, a distinct category of vocational school, include more academic courses.

The content of the curriculum is laid down by the Ministry of Education Culture and Sport, although there is more leeway in secondary schools than at the primary level.

Bagrut Examinations

National school-leaving examinations, known as Bagrut examinations, are offered in the twelfth grade, leading to credentials required for higher education. Candidates who pass a certain number of examinations and meet subject requirements are awarded matriculation certificates. Almost all graduates of academic schools and agricultural schools take the Bagrut, which is comparable to European maturity examinations. Graduates of vocational schools normally do not take the Bagrut, although there are exceptions.

Military Service

Both sexes are eligible for military service before or after taking the Bagrut examinations. Compulsory for Jews and Druzes, military service is voluntary for Christians, Circassians, and Muslims. Service typically begins at age eighteen, lasting three years for men and two years for women. Credentials are issued by the Ministry of Education Culture and Sport.

Post-Secondary Education

Each of the eight universities in Israel is autonomous and governed by its own board of governors. Neither the Ministry nor the Council is directly involved in the running of the universities, although each university is recognized by the Council for Higher Education.

The basic first degrees are the BA and the BSc, followed by the MA, the MSc and the PhD. The basic admissions requirement for all first-degree courses is the matriculation certificate, also known as the Bagrut. This requirement is applied strictly in Israeli universities. Exceptions may be made for graduates of kibbutz or vocational schools.

Higher Education as a Path to Mobility

Israeli culture views higher education as the key to higher mobility and socioeconomic status in Israeli society. For millennia medieval European antisemitism often forbade the Jews from owning land and farming, which limited their career choices for making a decent living. This forced many Jews to place a much higher premium on education allowing them to seek alternative career options that involved entrepreneurial and white-collar professional pursuits such as merchant trading, science, medicine, law, accountancy, and moneylending as these professions required higher levels of verbal, mathematical, and scientific literacy. The emphasis of education within Israeli society has its modern roots at least since the Jewish diaspora from the Renaissance and Enlightenment Movement all the way to the roots of Zionism in the 1880s.

Israel's populace is well educated and Israeli society highly values education. Education is a core value in Jewish culture and in Israeli society at large with many Israeli parents sacrificing their own personal comforts and financial resources to provide their children with the highest standards of education possible. Much of the Israeli Jewish population seek education as a passport to a decent white collar professional job and a middle class paycheck in the country's competitive high-tech economy. Jewish parents take great responsibility to inculcate the value of education in their children at a young age. Striving for high academic achievement and educational success is stressed in many modern Jewish Israeli households as parents make sure that their children are well educated adequately in order to gain the necessary technological skills needed for employment success to compete in Israel's modern high-tech job market. Israelis see competency with in demand job skills such as literacy in math and science as especially necessary for employment success in Israel's competitive 21st-century high-tech economy.

Israel's Jewish population maintains a relatively high level of educational attainment where just under half of all Israeli Jews (46%) hold post-secondary degrees. As the Israeli economy is largely scientific and technological based, the labor market demands people who have achieved some form of higher education, particularly related to science and engineering in order to gain a competitive edge when searching for employment. In 2012, the country ranked second among OECD countries (tied with Japan and after Canada) for the percentage of 25 to 64-year-olds that have attained tertiary education with 46 percent compared with the OECD average of 32 percent. In addition, nearly twice as many Israelis aged 55-64 held a higher education degree compared to other OECD countries, with 47 percent holding an academic degree compared with the OECD average of 25%. It ranks fifth among OECD countries for the total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP.

Psychometric Entrance Test

Universities generally require a certain amount of bagrut matriculation units (as well as a certain grade average) and a good grade in the Psychometric Entrance Test, which is similar in many respects to the American SAT.

The Psychometric Entrance Test (colloquially known in Hebrew simply as "psychometry" - psixometri, פסיכומטרי) is a standardized test used as a higher education admission exam. The PET covers three areas: quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning and the English language. It is administered by the National Institute for Testing and Evaluation (NITE) and is heavily weighed for university admissions. The test may be taken in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, French, Spanish, or combined Hebrew/English.

Open University

The Open University of Israel accepts all applicants regardless of their academic history, though it still maintains high academic standards.

Financial Aid

All of Israel's nine public universities (and some of their colleges) are subsidized by the government, and students pay only a small part of the actual cost of tuition. Students who have completed military service are entitled to a 90% discount on their first-year tuition fees.

University Rankings

According to the Webometrics ranking, six of Israel's universities place in the top 100 schools of Asia. Four universities place in the top 150 in the world according to the Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Ranking of World Universities, and three are in the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings (i.e. amongst the "Top 200 World Universities").

Challenges and Disparities

Despite these achievements, inequality remains a significant challenge. Israel's performance on international tests reflects this, with the country ranking 33rd in reading achievement and 40th in mathematics and science in the latest PISA exams.

Arab Education System

Israel operates an Arab education system for the Israeli-Arab minority, teaching Arab students, in Arabic, about their history and culture. However, there have been claims that the Jewish education system gets more resources. According to the Follow-Up Committee for Arab Education, the Israeli government spends an average of $192 per year on each Arab student, and $1,100 per Jewish student. It also notes that drop-out rate for Israeli Arab citizens is twice as high as that of their Jewish counterparts (12 percent versus 6 percent).

Christian Arabs tend to have had the highest rates of success in the matriculation examinations, both in comparison to the Muslims and the Druze, and in comparison to all students in the Jewish education system. Arab Christians were also the vanguard in terms of eligibility for higher education, and they have attained a bachelor's degree and academic degree more than the median Israeli population. The rate of students studying in the field of medicine was also higher among the Christian Arab students, compared with all the students from other sectors.

Efforts to Close the Gap

In 1999, in attempt to close the gap between Arab and Jewish education sectors, the Israeli education minister, Yossi Sarid, announced an affirmative action policy, promising that Arabs would be granted 25% of the education budget, more than their proportional share in the population (18%). In 2001, a Human Rights Watch report stated that students in government-run Arab schools received inferior education due to fewer teachers, inadequate school construction, and lack of libraries and recreational space. In 2007, the Israeli Education Ministry announced a plan to increase funding for schools in Arab communities. In 2010, the number of computer science teachers in the Arab sector rose by 50%. The Arab sector also saw a rise of 165% in instructors teaching technology classes and a 171% increase in the number teaching mathematics.

In 2011, the Council for Higher Education introduced a 5-Year Plan to increase accessibility to higher education among Arab, Druze and Circassian students. The first plan ran through 2015/16, and was subsequently extended through 2021/22. The plan is being implemented in 30 institutions of higher education that receive their budgets from the CHE's Planning and Budgeting Committee, and where the student body includes Arab, Druze, and Circassian students. Beyond governmental 5-Year Plans, nonprofit partnerships have played a growing role in closing educational gaps.

Gender Disparities

The dropout rates in grades 8-12 is higher for males than females. In 2011, the dropout rate declined, but was still higher among males, with 4.5% of male and 1.7% of female students dropping out of school. In addition, the passing rate of high school matriculation exams stood at 62% for females and 51% for males. The rate of women studying in universities and colleges is also higher; in 2011-2012, 56.7% of students at academic institutions were female. However, 81% of Israeli professors are men. In addition, fields such as engineering, electricity, physics, mathematics, computer science, and natural sciences are overwhelmingly male-dominated, though there are a large number of women in certain fields of engineering, such as biomedical, industrial, and environmental engineering.

Budget Cuts and Teacher Wages

Over the years, government budget cuts have taken their toll. Israel was amongst the top-ranked nations in international rankings for science and mathematics performance in the 1960s, but dropped to 33 out of 41 nations in the 2002 survey. Wages for Israeli teachers are low compared to other industrialized countries, especially due to the small amount of frontal teaching hours with respect to other developed countries (the salary per hour is similar to that of the OECD standards), according to a survey of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Curriculum and Textbooks

According to a paper by Nurit Peled-Elhanan, a professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, textbooks in Israel promote a negative image of Arabs. According to a 2011 report by the Arab Cultural Association, Arabic textbooks provided to third to ninth grade students in Israeli schools were found to contain many mistakes.

Education in the West Bank

The occupied West Bank territories were divided into three administrative regions in 1995, Area A, B and C. Area A is majorly governed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), while in Area B the PA has similar responsibilities, except for the security of the area which is managed by Israeli authorities.

Despite it seems that Israel does not have much to do with education in the West Bank, they do have a tremendous amount of indirect influence over these civilian sectors just by controlling land or constructions in Area C. The education sector in Area A and B are affected by the overwhelming control of Israeli authorities in Area C, since the isolated regions with no airport or bay can only get supplies through Area C.

Area C of the occupied West Bank territories hosts approximately 325 thousand Jewish Israelis, 180 thousand Palestinians, and 20 thousand Bedouin and other shepherding Israelis. Israeli control limits non-Israeli settlement and certain activities, such as construction and infrastructural matters. These measures often leave non-Jewish villages without basic utilities and services, such as water, electricity, healthcare, education, or appropriate public transportation and roads. Moreover, Israeli authorities have the right to demolish Palestinian and Bedouin settlements along Israeli interest and relocate their population. Some Bedouin villages are demolished simply because the Israeli authorities do not acknowledge them as official settlements.

Despite the lack of direct Israeli influence on education, these conditions prevent mostly Palestinian and Bedouin children from attending school among appropriate conditions, or even from attending at all. The demolition of settlements endangers educational institutions as well, while new schools can rarely be built due to the restriction of non-Jewish construction. This leaves entire villages without any form of educational services. In addition, it is often unsafe for small children to travel alone to school due to frequent atrocities targeting Palestinian and Bedouin children, some of which is committed at military checkpoints where children often need to cross to get to school. During school raids, the Israeli military frequently arrests several students and confiscate school equipment.

These dangers discourage parents to send their children to school, especially their daughters. Girls’ education is particularly endangered as some traditional societal norms prohibit them to travel alone and when no male family member can accompany them on the way, they cannot attend school. In addition, early marriage, or the need for them to stay home to help take care of their grandparents or disabled siblings, for instance, also results in many girls never attending or failing to finish their education.

These circumstances negatively influence the quality of education which results in common disinterest in education among children in Area C which can result in children leaving school, while the ones who can continue with their studies often do this in poor-equipped educational institutions. Dropout rates are particularly high among Bedouin children: only 32% of them get a matriculation certificate compared to 68% of the Israeli population (excluding the Haredi community). These issues were exacerbated by schools shifting to online teaching during COVID-19, as Bedouins frequently live in tents without any electricity, internet access, and computers.

Education in Area C lacks the adequate financial resources. Most financial support arrive from international organisations, such as the USAID, UNRWA, and the Middle East Quartet. However, both these organisations and the PA need to complete prolonged bureaucratic procedures to finance projects and receive permit from Israeli authorities.

Recent Developments and Reforms

Strategic Plan for Meaningful Learning

In 2014, a national strategic plan was developed to help shift the focus from student achievement, as measured by tests, to the processes of learning and teaching (Strategic Plan for Meaningful Learning, Israel’s Education Moves Up a Grade, known as Israel Olah Kita). Within the scope of the new plan, several subject curricula were revised, especially in terms of syllabus organization, teaching instructions, and assessment formats.

Strengthening Science and Technology Education

Beginning in 2009, a national program was established to strengthen science and technology education (Strategic Plan to Strengthen Science and Technology). Within the scope of this program, the curriculum for lower secondary schools was revised, and the corresponding learning materials extensively rewritten. During this process, technology was separated from the scientific disciplines, and topics were clearly defined within each discipline. The teaching sequence in Grades 7 to 9 was reconfigured in a spiral progression adapted to students’ cognitive developmental stages.

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