Feature

“The qualification needed for being a teacher in Israel is basically having a pulse,” says education expert Yitzhak Klein.

Shimon Sherman

(JNS)

For the first time, Orthodox students outnumber secular students among Israel’s first-grade pupils.

Education Ministry data for the 2025/26 school year lists just over 66,000 pupils entering state-secular schools, compared with roughly 72,000 combined in the state-religious and Haredi streams.

Arab, Bedouin, Druze and Circassian schools together account for about 40,000 first graders, bringing total enrollment to just under 180,000.

Demographer Sergio DellaPergola, professor emeritus and former chairman of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Harman Research Institute of Contemporary Jewry, explained that these statistics are the culmination of a long trend.

“For many years, we have seen the numbers shifting in this direction; the shift has been gradual but stable,” DellaPergola told JNS.

DellaPergola further explained that the driving force behind this shift is fertility: “Clearly, the dominant factor is the birth rate. The birth rate is the main engine of population change in Israel …, the wide differences in the birth rate of different sections of the Israeli population … determine a much faster rate of growth among the religious population and, in particular, the Haredim.”

Two decades ago, about six in 10 Jewish first graders were enrolled in the secular system; today, it is fewer than half.

DellaPergola noted that official forecasts underestimated the scale of the change: “There are more than 40% more children in first grade in the Haredi system than had been expected 10 years ago, whereas changes for the secular and Arab systems are virtually nil.”

He added that while secularization continues to play a demographic role, its effect is limited compared with fertility: “There is a continuous transfer of people from one movement or section of persuasion to another …, a net process of secularization in Israeli society. However, this is very weak compared with the actual numbers of the newborn, which are substantially stronger.”

DellaPergola emphasized that first-grade enrollment is a preview of future society: “First grade is six years after you are born, so the trend anticipates what will happen later.”

Israeli educational performance

While the enrollment figures highlight who is entering Israel’s classrooms, test results indicate what those students are learning once inside. National assessments provide a first look at how different parts of the system are performing against the backdrop of a major demographic shift.

The most recent Meitzav (“School Efficiency and Growth Indicator”) exams, Israeli national standardized tests for students in Hebrew, math, English and science, showed widening gaps between pupils in the center and those in the geographic and socioeconomic periphery.

Average math scores in state-secular schools were roughly 40 points higher than in the Haredi sector, where many schools do not administer the test at all. Arab schools, serving nearly one-fifth of the country’s students, also reported significantly lower averages in core subjects compared with the Jewish state system.

Israel’s standing in international comparisons tells a similar story. In the 2022 OECD PISA exams, Israeli 15-year-olds scored an average of 458 in math, 474 in reading and 465 in science, each slightly below the OECD averages of 472, 476 and 485, respectively.

In math, 63% of Israeli students reached level 2 or higher, compared to 69% across the OECD; in science, 68% achieved this level, versus 76% on average.

At the top end, 6% of Israelis reached levels 5 or 6 in math, while in reading, Israel was closer to the OECD norm.

The results also highlighted wide internal gaps: high-achieving pupils in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem performed on par with peers in Europe and East Asia, while students from peripheral towns and low socioeconomic communities scored far lower.

Yitzhak Klein, former head of the Department of Policy Research at the Kohelet Policy Forum, told JNS, “The Israeli public education system really doesn’t work. It’s comparable to dysfunctional systems in big American cities like Chicago or New York, structures weighed down by interests that have little to do with children’s needs.”

Source of the problem

Some critics point to the organization of the school system as a central issue.

State-secular, state-religious, Haredi and Arab schools operate under separate curricula and oversight. The critics argue that the structure allows families to choose an education aligned with their community, but also produces uneven resources and outcomes.

However, Klein dismissed these concerns, saying “the division into multiple school systems doesn’t drive polarization so much as reflect it. The schools mirror Israel’s cultural divisions rather than create them.”

The highly centralized Ministry of Education continues to face pressure to give schools greater autonomy.

Advocates argue that more local control would allow principals and teachers to adapt to their students’ needs, while critics caution that it could deepen inequalities between the different streams.

Staffing is also often cited as one of the system’s weak points. Israel employs about 200,000 teachers, yet statistics from the Education Ministry show gaps persist in math, English and science, particularly in schools outside major cities.

Education Ministry data further shows that more than a third of teachers leave the profession within their first five years, and average salaries remain below the OECD mean despite recent agreements to raise wages.

Some observers argue that these shortages and retention problems are a major reason for weaker student outcomes. Others contend that performance is less a question of numbers than of policy, pointing to overcentralization, bureaucracy and limited school autonomy.

Avrum Tomer, a researcher of education policy at the Kohelet Policy Forum and head of the parents organization HaDor HaBa—Parents for Choice in Education, rejected the shortage narrative in his interview with JNS.

“According to all available data, there is no shortage of teachers. On the contrary, in recent decades the number of teachers in the system has grown rapidly relative to the number of students,” he said.

“On the ground, then, there is a shortage, but it stems from centralization and the lack of flexibility that a freer, more responsive labor market could provide to meet the varying needs in each place,” Tomer said.

For those skeptical that teacher shortages are the main reason for weak outcomes, attention often turns to the unions. The Israel Teachers’ Union and the Secondary School Teachers’ Association (SSTA) are among the most influential labor groups in the country, regularly clashing with the Finance Ministry over salaries, contracts and work rules.

Tomer was blunt: “Teachers’ unions in Israel could, in principle, play a constructive role. Instead, they have become a heavy weight on the system’s neck, consistently blocking essential reforms.”

He added that by prioritizing seniority over excellence, the unions have entrenched mediocrity over merit.

Klein echoed the criticism, linking bureaucracy with organized labor: “Administratively, everyone suffers from the way the system is run. The Ministry of Education retains complete centralized control run by career bureaucrats, political leaders are threatened constantly with strikes, and the unions demand quantity over quality. Together, it’s a recipe that blocks improvement.”

Both Tomer and Klein explained that beyond the issues surrounding union politics and bureaucracy, teacher quality was also a central weakness.

Tomer stressed, “The real challenge is not the number of teachers in the system but their quality. We fail to attract the most capable university graduates into teaching.

Klein voiced similar concerns about standards in teacher training: “People who populate schools of education are not the top college students, but near the bottom. … a system cannot be better than the teachers who populate it, and the teachers in Israel are, as a whole, not good.”

He argued that low salaries prevent talented candidates from entering the classroom: “If you had 3% of the entering class in the Technion engineering schools going into teaching math and physics, you could solve a big part of the problem, but you’re not going to solve it at 9,000 shekels [$2,700] a month.”

Klein summarized the point bluntly, saying, “The qualification needed for being a teacher in Israel is basically having a pulse.”

Both Klein and Tomer emphasized that greater school autonomy is another factor critical for raising standards.

Klein explained that meaningful reform depends on giving principals real authority: “To really improve, schools need autonomy. Principals should be able to hire and fire, and to pay enough to bring talented people into math and science classrooms. Without that flexibility, you can’t attract the people who could raise standards.”

He added that local administration of the education system during the COVID pandemic proves that decentralization can work in practice: “The dirty secret is that local authorities already managed fairly well during Corona without the ministry’s micromanagement.

“What’s needed from the state is not to run schools but to set clear standards of what a student should know by the end of each grade,” Klein said.

Tomer made a similar argument, saying that the state should set measurable goals but avoid interfering in day-to-day management.

Innovation and reform

Despite recurring labor disputes and persistent bureaucratic hurdles, a growing wave of educational reforms has advanced in Israel over the past several years.

One of the most significant is the Shoreshim (“Roots”) program, announced on May 27, 2025, by Education Minister Yoav Kisch. The initiative seeks to reinforce Jewish and Zionist identity by embedding weekly Bible classes in all schools from grades 1 to 12 and integrating a Bible study exam into the national Meitzav assessment.

A new core subject, “Paths of Heritage,” is being introduced for elementary and middle schools by 2026. To support this rollout, more than 1,600 educators have undergone specialized training. The education budget for Jewish identity studies alone has quadrupled, from 1% to 4% of total allocations in just one year.

In parallel, Israel has embraced technological transformation in the classroom, culminating in the declaration of 2025 as the “Year of AI.” As part of this program, the Ministry of Education launched a national effort to train 70,000 teachers in classroom applications of artificial intelligence, supported by 3,000 mentors from more than 400 tech companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple and Nvidia.

Five core AI tools, ranging from chatbot tutors to Minecraft-based learning environments, are being deployed across grades 4 to 12 to enhance lesson planning, engagement and personalization.

Complementing this initiative is the AI Regulatory Sandbox Pilot, launched in July 2025 with 10 million shekels ($3 million) in funding. The sandbox allows approved ed-tech companies to run live experiments in public schools, testing AI-driven personalized learning solutions under regulatory supervision.

These reforms aim not only to boost academic performance but also to mitigate challenges such as teacher shortages, large class sizes and uneven resource allocation.

Local governments have also experimented with alternative models, building on earlier pilots. Municipalities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa have expanded their “autonomous schools” program, granting principals greater discretion over hiring, budgeting and curriculum design, within national guidelines.

In the Negev and Galilee, charter-style schools continue to pilot STEM-focused curricula supported by philanthropic foundations. Though evaluations show modest improvements in student engagement and achievement, efforts to scale these models nationwide have met logistical and institutional opposition.

Tomer pointed out that political resistance is a persistent barrier.

“Any courageous minister of education who attempts to lead fundamental change will immediately face fierce opposition from all those who benefit from the status quo: teachers’ unions, senior bureaucrats, and at times, local authorities,” he said.

Tomer added that the state of Israel’s education system constitutes a paradox, considering the country’s standing as an international leader in tech innovation.

“Israel’s technological renaissance is being driven by only a relatively small portion of the population. … The excelling minority benefits from stronger educational opportunities, partly because it is less dependent on the state system and receives much enrichment from outside it,” Tomer said.

Image: First graders on the first day of school in Jerusalem, Sept. 1, 2025. Photo by Chaim Goldberg/Flash90.