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Response to the Shapira Committee for Special Education’s Report: “Education through the Lens of Special Ed”

Kohelet Policy Forum addresses the two central recommendations of the committee: reducing the number of students per class to 19 and drastically increasing investment in preschool. These issues have been thoroughly researched by Kohelet Policy Forum in the past years, including by comparing data to other states, recommending policy steps and warning of irreversible and costly mistakes. The relevant policy papers are included for a more detailed account of the issues.

The recently published Shapira Committee report starts with the assumption that improvement of special education requires overall changes in the education system.

Similar to our analysis, the committee’s report reveals that despite the fact that the teacher-student ratio in Israel is on par with the OECD average, class size in Israel is particularly large. The committee’s report claims classroom size is a central factor in the rapid growth of small special education classes opening in recent years, and that reducing the overall system’s class size to 19 students would arrest this trend by providing better educational responses to all students.

The report is also correct in its finding that Israel funds more than the necessary school hours, which can be cut to enable a reduction in class size without increasing a demand for teachers that cannot not be met.

However, the report did not address other factors, such as teachers’ sabbatical year and the rigidity of the teachers’ employment model, preventing teachers’ mobility and the schools’ ability to tailor teaching positions to their needs.

See Avrum Tomer and Nisan Avraham’s research paper “A Comparative Study of the Effective Use of Teaching Staff in the Israeli Education System“, here.

The committee furthermore ignored a fundamental question regarding the underutilization of the education system’s teaching staff and the excess of teaching hours: Is it preferable to reduce the number of students per class or to improve the teachers’ workforce? Extensive research worldwide deals with this very question, and contrary to the report’s conclusion, the consensus is that it is better to improve teacher quality and raise the entry threshold to the teaching profession rather than to reduce classroom size.

The committee’s report also does not address what our analysis has demonstrated to be the two main structural reasons the system’s teaching staff is underused and there is an excess of teaching hours: (1) the absence of any incentive for efficiency due to the disconnect between teaching hours and other school resources, which were transferred to schools under the “self-management” reform; and (2) the lack of flexibility in managing the resource of teaching positions and school hours. The two reasons are of course, interrelated.

In a broader view, we do not believe it appropriate for the Ministry of Education to determine class size for the entire system, nor how to invest the resources allocated to schools for their students’ benefit. The Shapira Committee’s proposal is to determine the desired solution across the board, using a “one-size-fits-all” approach, instead of letting schools decide how to properly invest their resources for their students’ benefit, especially the ones among them who are struggling. The committee has determined that among all relevant variables – quantity and quality of teachers, amount of teaching hours, diversity of learning methods, and class size – the step that would best benefit all Israeli students is to reduce the number of students per class. This decision is not based on global research nor on global education systems’ trends in the last decade and a half.

We believe it is time to once and for all give up the presumption of making system-wide decisions for all schools on how to allocate their resources. Instead, we recommend placing greater trust in principals and local authorities who should be assumed to be better suited to understand how their resources can be optimally utilized.

See Avrum Tomer’s policy paper “Teachers’ Employment Model and Improving Israel’s Education System”, here.

We support the committee’s recommendation regarding the reduction of school hours by canceling Friday school hours and transferring to a five day school week, as is customary in other countries worldwide. Note that to be effective, teachers’ regular day off must be cancelled, with most teachers working five days a week. We also recommend replacing Friday school with optional, subsidized programs for working parents.

We further recommend canceling the “long education day” program, which is still operating under a trial framework, and unequally allocates many of the teaching hours in the system. Instead, transfer the funding to free and subsidized afternoon programs for the entire system, according to accepted criteria.

The Shapira report’s second major recommendation seeks to “flip the pyramid” and increase investment in early childhood, at the expense of investment in older ages, due to the higher return on investment. In this, the report’s authors join many others calling for more investment in early childhood, especially ages 0-3. However, contrary to popular claims, the impact on children under age 3 staying in day care facilities is not unambiguous, and positive impact greatly depends on their quality. Low quality can actually have a negative impact.

See Tirtza Attia’s policy paper ” Subsidizing Early Childhood Care in Israel – Current Conditions and a Proposal for Change”, here.

Moreover, it is doubtful whether such a step is even possible, especially when simultaneously seeking to reduce the number of children in preschool and increase the number of preschool teachers and assistants. The State of Israel is the leading country in the West in birth rate, meaning that an exceptionally high number of caregivers would be required to maintain day care facilities of a quality consistent with the accepted quality standards in the West. A significant expansion of day care facilities for the 0-3 age group would require a substantial portion of the workforce and the expenditure of enormous sums of money (20-32 billion NIS per year).

The high demand for caregivers could lead to the lowering of standards and the indiscriminate recruitment of caregivers without training, and thus to an actual decrease in day care centers’ quality. In such a situation, day care centers would not necessarily benefit the children they administer to, but may even pose a risk.

Instead of creating a governmental system of “free education from age zero” at enormous costs and likely low quality (given the constraints), we propose allowing working parents eligible for subsidies to choose the day care facility they prefer by incorporating the many private high-quality day care centers that exist today as service providers for 0-3 year olds, alongside the subsidized government daycare centers, as is customary in many other countries.

See the research paper by Rachel Zini, Michael Sarel, Nisan Avraham and Ricky Maman ” Free Early Childhood Education – Not Really Education, and Definitely not Free“, here

                                   For the full Hebrew response

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