The View From Israel

It’s a new year in Israel. Rosh HaShanah, a two day celebration of the Jewish new year, was blessed with much-needed rain. Children with fingers sticky from dipping apples into honey splashed around in the captivating showers. Rain, such a fortuitous sight on Rosh HaShanah, seemed to wash away worries for a day—worries about a nuclear Iran, the stalled peace process, and tribulations at the United Nations.  

The new year also marks the start of a new school year. As students go back to school all that is good and bad about the Israeli educational system comes to be debated yet again. One cannot say categorically that the Israeli educational system is either good or bad. It is an educational system filled with paradoxes. Forty-four percent of Israelis are college graduates as compared to 29 percent of Americans, yet Israel has one of the lowest percentages of GDP spent on education of any industrialized nation. Schools are literally crumbling and overcrowded, yet Israel is one of the most literate nations on the planet.

The single greatest problem with the education system is a lack of funding. Why is there a lack of money for education in an industrialized nation with a strong cultural emphasis on education?  War after war has caused Israel to be the largest defense spender per GDP and as a percentage of the budget of all developed countries. Israel spends 9 percent of GDP on defense while the average expenditure of higher income countries is 3 percent of GDP. Israel has become a modern day Sparta.

The defense budget for 2009 is NIS 48.6 billion the highest amount in Israel’s history. The educational system must compete with this ballooning defense budget for governmental funds, and it is often the case that education loses. The American bumper sticker that says, “It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the air force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber,” is true in Israel.

Because of mounting tensions with Iran, the government has proposed to add NIS 1.5 billion to the defense budget. The money will come in part from cuts that include NIS 63 million from the Education Ministry and NIS 51 million from higher education. This comes at a time when Israel has been seriously lagging other nations in increasing education expenditure. Between 1995 and 2006 per-child investment in education rose by 39 percent in OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries while in Israel it only increased by 9 percent.

The Israeli education system suffers many consequences as a result of the budget woes—overcrowded classrooms, low teacher salaries, a loss of extra-curricular activities, and lower academic standards. Israel has the third most crowded classrooms of any OECD nation and can average up to 32.7 students per teacher. Teachers’ salaries in Israel are one of the lowest in the developed world. This has lead to brain drain in the teaching field—bright college graduates are attracted to higher paying industries such as high tech.

The government gives equal funding to public schools regardless of need, covering approximately 70-75 percent of schools’ budgets.  Parents and donations are expected to make up the difference. In affluent areas where parents can afford to pay, the effects of the budget cuts are not felt in the classrooms, but in areas where parents can’t afford to pay as much, the effects are more severe. Immigrant children from Ethiopia and former Soviet Union countries are one of the hardest hit under this system.

As previously stated, the Israeli educational system is not categorically bad. It is actually a study in achievement despite means. Walk into a standard classroom and one will see teachers using ingenuity and artistry to turn simple household objects into musical instruments, used office paper into works of art, shopping bags into elaborate costumes. Children from Ethiopia, the Ukraine, Venezuela, and America will be sitting alongside native Jerusalemites reading stories of coexistence such as “Salim the Kind Beduin.”

Israel has been looking for ways to narrow the social and economic gap between students.  The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) which has been phenomenally successful in American schools is being brought to Israel under a pilot program. The program emphasizes high academic expectations and social values. The program will be located in the northern city of Nahariya in a run-down building in a poor section of town with a high crime rate. If the program is as successful as it has been in America, efforts will be made to open more KIPP schools in Israel’s social and economic periphery.

The greatest bit of optimism for the Israeli educational system might be found in a prominent education study done in America in 1966 called “Equality of Educational Opportunity.” The study found that expenditures per student, teacher education, and class size were less important than parents’ education and attitudes toward education and the educational motivations of one’s peers. Ultimately the most important elements of a successful education are not money-related, but the support of family and peers.

Amy Styer is a freelance journalist based in Tel Aviv, Israel.