Education in Israel

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Education in Israel

Education Ministry
Education Minister of Israel	Yoav Kisch
National education budget (2015)
Budget	45.5 billion ₪[1]
General details
Primary languages	Hebrew & Arabic
System type	State & Private
Literacy (2014[2])
Total	97.8%
Male	98.7%
Female	95.8%
Enrollment
Total	1,445,555
Primary	828,732
Secondary	259,139
Post secondary	357,685
Attainment
Secondary diploma	85%[4]
Post-secondary diploma	49%[3]

The education system in Israel consists of three tiers: primary education (grades 1–6, approximately ages 6–12), middle school (grades 7–9, approximately ages 12–15) and high school (grades 10–12, approximately ages 15–18). Compulsory education takes place from kindergarten through 10th grade.^[5] The school year begins on September 1 (September 2 if September 1 is on Saturday), ending for elementary school pupils on June 30 (June 29 if June 30 is on Saturday), and for middle school and high school pupils on June 20 (June 19 if June 20 is on Saturday). Haredi Yeshivas follow an independent schedule, starting on 1 Elul.

Israeli culture views higher education as the key to higher mobility and socioeconomic status in Israeli society.^[6] 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.^[7] 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. Jewish communities in the Levant were the first to introduce compulsory education for which the organized community, not less than the parents, was responsible for the education of the next generation.^[8] With contemporary Jewish culture's strong emphasis, promotion of scholarship and learning and the strong propensity to promote cultivation of intellectual pursuits as well as the nation's high university educational attainment rate exemplifies how highly Israeli society values higher education.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

Israel's populace is well educated and Israeli society highly values education.^[15] 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.^[15] 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.^[15] 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. This figure has remained stable in their already high levels of educational attainment over recent generations.^[16][17] Israeli Jews (among those ages 25 and older) have average of 11.6 years of schooling making them one of the most highly educated of all major religious groups in the world.^[18][7] In Arab schools, the exam on Biblical studies is replaced by an exam on Muslim, Christian or Druze heritage.^[19] Maariv described the Christian Arabs sectors as "the most successful in education system",^[20] since Christians fared the best in terms of education in comparison to any other religion in Israel.^[21] Israeli children from Russian-speaking families have a higher bagrut pass rate at high-school level.^[22] Although amongst immigrant children born in the Former Soviet Union, the bagrut pass rate is highest amongst those families from European FSU states at 62.6%, and lower amongst those from Central Asian and Caucasian FSU states.^[23] In 2014, 61.5% of all Israeli twelfth graders earned a matriculation certificate.^[24]

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%.^[25][26] It ranks fifth among OECD countries for the total expenditure on educational institutions as a percentage of GDP. In 2011, the country spent 7.3% of its GDP on all levels of education, comparatively more than the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 6.3% and as a result has fostered an education system that helped transform the country and rapidly grow its economy over the past 70 years.^[25][26]

The Israeli education system has been praised for various reasons, including its high quality and its major role in spurring Israel's economic development and technological boom.^[27][28] Many international business leaders and organizations such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the technology giant IBM have praised Israel for its high quality of education in helping spur Israel's economic development.^[29][30]