370,000 new pupils have and will enter Israelis schools between 2001 and 2017, of whom 43% will be Arabs, 40%, haredim (ultra-orthodox), 13% will join the state religious school system, and just 4% will join the state secular school system, says the Central Bureau of Statistics in its "Back to School: selected data from “Society in Israel - Report No. 5”, published today. The figures mean that the proportion of pupils in the Jewish state school system will fall from 52% to 41%, while the proportion of haredim pupils will rise from 12% to 18%, and the proportion of Arab pupils will rise from 22% to 25%.
In the 2010-11 school year, there were 901,630 elementary school pupils, 263,736 junior high school pupils, and 368,246 high school students in schools supervised by the Ministry of Education. 73% of elementary school pupils were in the Hebrew speaking school systems, 19% were in the Arab state school system, 5% were in the Bedouin state school system, and 2% were in the Druze state school system. There were 433,059 children in state and municipal kindergartens and preschools.
In 2010, 84% of high school seniors, including students in the haredi supervised school system, took matriculation exams, and 56% passed the exams and were eligible for certificates. The figures clearly show the correlation between eligibility for matriculation and meeting university entrance exams and the students' socioeconomic status. In 2010, 57% of non-haredi high school seniors in the state school systems from poor towns were eligible for matriculation certificates, compared with 77% of high school seniors in the state school systems from wealthy towns.
Parents' education is also a factor on pupils' future academic achievement. There is a correlation between parents' education and the chances that their children will recive a matriculation certificate cum laude. Only 3% of students in the Hebrew school systems eligible for matriculation and mothers had less than eight years of schooling received a matriculation certificate cum laude, compared with 15% of students whose mothers had 16 years or more of schooling. In the Arab state school system, the correlation is even starker: 2% and 28%, respectively.
The report states that, in the past decade, teachers have grown older, as the proportion of teachers over the age of 50 has increased. The trend is especially pronounced among junior high and high school teachers. There has also been a sharp increase in the proportion of teachers with MA or higher degrees over the past decade, rising from 19% of teachers in the Hebrew school systems in 2001 to 29% in 2011. As a result of reforms in the education system, the pupil-to-teacher ratio in the Jewish state school systems declined from 15.3 to 13.5.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 27, 2012
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