{"id":12725,"date":"2026-07-14T19:21:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T19:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/?post_type=article&p=12725"},"modified":"2026-07-19T09:19:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:19:14","slug":"the-budget-discrimination-of-public-school-students-in-the-education-system-is-only-a-symptom-of-the-real-issue","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.kohelet.org.il\/en\/article\/the-budget-discrimination-of-public-school-students-in-the-education-system-is-only-a-symptom-of-the-real-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Budget Discrimination of Public School Students in the Education System is Only a Symptom of the Real Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week, the Israel High Court of Justice (Bagatz<\/em>) heard a petition regarding the budgetary discrimination of students studying in the public school track (mamlachti<\/em>) as opposed to the public-religious one (mamlachti-dati<\/em>). The petition was filed by the Manor Center, the National Parents’ Leadership, The Hebrew-Statist Education Council, The Berl Katznelson Foundation and Knesset Members Gilad Kariv and Vladimir Beliak. The petitioners pointed out a well-known distortion in the system; however, the solution their petition put forward can be likened, as the Chelm parable goes, to building a hospital under a rickety bridge to address all the resulting injuries instead of fixing the bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, when it is reported that every student in the public-religious track “gets” thousands of shekels more than their public school counterparts, this doesn\u2019t mean larger budgets are transferred to public-religious schools. The Israeli education system transfers resources to schools in the form of teaching hours for various subjects, funding for busing, funding for construction, maintenance and supplies, budgets for field trips and on and on, even before we get into the complex, sky-high budgets for special ed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The teaching hours, which comprise the bulk of the Ministry of Education’s budget, are calculated according to complicated formulas, and reach schools through various channels. The reasons why in practice, the state invests more in public-religious track students than in public track students are varied, from smaller classes and gender separation in some schools (so that each ” budgeted hour” is divided among fewer students), through smaller schools due to the greater demand for opening new schools for each religious sub-stream, to the additional specialized lessons, programs, and positions for students from the religious sector – some of which are also funded by coalition budgets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the petitioners asked the Ministry of Education to map out the factors causing the discrimination, the Ministry needed eighteen months just to respond to the petition and clarify the situation, because the Ministry has long since lost full control over all the bifurcations of the massive budget it manages. Following the first court hearing, representatives from the Ministry of Education have now been sent to do further in-depth work to complete the picture. According to the petitioners’ representatives, they don’t intend to reduce the investment in religious sector education, but rather the opposite – increase the investment in public education as well, so that the investment in Bible studies and strengthening religious-Zionist identity is matched by resources directed toward strengthening secular students’ identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The petitioners are akin to a doctor who treats his patient’s every symptom: painkiller for headaches, ointment for rashes, drops for a cough and medication for fatigue but forgets to cure the actual disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inequality present in the education system is a distorted side effect of the centralization and cumbersome nature of the Ministry of Education, whose administrators throughout the years have failed to trust school principals to know how to make use of their own resources. The Ministry earmarks budgets for every product, service, subject, or position, and as a result, loses control and creates disparities that it cannot even explain. The funding method is outdated and wasteful, and only fixing and decentralizing the system will cure the disease itself, instead of taking on each symptom separately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bagatz<\/em> is not going to change the budgeting method, it will only demand one more complication, so that after all resources are mixed together in a blender, it will emerge, after the fact, that disparities were minimized. Instead, public pressure should be directed towards the next Minister of Education, who will hopefully bring about the necessary structural changes in the system. The Ministry’s budgets should be distributed to schools and local authorities according to the simplest possible formula, such that every student registered at a school “brings” an equalized, shekel-based budget to that school’s principal, to be used at his or her discretion, subject to the defined goals and purposes of the Ministry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only factor that should influence budget amount is the School Nurture Index. Schools should administer their workforce themselves, and prioritize educational needs according to localized, community driven needs and scarcities without being chained to endless Ministry definitions and conditions. This is also the easiest way to ensure that the budget is distributed equally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(First appeared in Hebrew in Israel Hayom<\/a><\/em>). <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This week, the Israel High Court of Justice (Bagatz) heard a petition regarding the budgetary discrimination of students studying in the public school track (mamlachti) as opposed to the public-religious one (mamlachti-dati). 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