The figures show that government investment in early education in Israel is 54% lower than the average in OECD countries: while Israel spends on average $5,864 for every child, the OECD average spending per child is actually more than double: $12,750.

Graph: Per Pupil Expenditure by Level in 2021, Israel and OECD Average, in PPP dollars

Source: Adva Center analysis of OECD.  Education at a Glance 2024.

The situation of early education in the public sector is of special concern. Only about a fourth of children aged 0-3 are to be found in subsidized educational frameworks, like family and institutional day care systems. There is a shortage of day care due to the low rate of construction of new institutions and also a shortage of care workers, due to heavy workloads and low remuneration. In addition, staff members are responsible for more children than recommended by professionals, making it more difficult to provide high-quality care and education.

The construction of day care centers has been progressing at a painfully slow pace, mainly due to problems like the lack of public spaces designated for building. Thus, the usage of budgets allocated for the construction of day care centers remains low at all types of local authority. The problem is especially serious in Arab localities, where between 2014 and 2020, these local authorities utilized only 50% of the budgets allocated for day care centers. This contrasts with the situation in non-Haredi Jewish localities, where 61% of such budgets were utilized, and Haredi localities, where 79% of designated budgets were utilized.

As mentioned above, the problem is not only construction but also personnel, from the standpoint of both quality and quantity.

At the level of early education, the figures reveal that Israel’s investment in this level of education in 2021 was significantly lower than the OECD average: Israel invested some $6,800 per child, a sum that was 42% lower than the OECD average, which stood at $11,735 per child.

When it comes to higher levels, Israel invests comparatively more in elementary than in secondary education. At the elementary level, Israel’s outlays per student are only 5% lower than the OECD average. However, in secondary education, which includes both middle and high school, the gap is larger: 21%.

In 2023, the average annual expenditure per student from elementary through high school was higher in state religious education than in state secular education: NIS 25,634, compared with NIS 22,153.

Graph: Percentage Disparity in Per Pupil Expenditure between Israel and the OECD Average, 2021

Source: Adva Center analysis of OECD. Education at a Glance 2024.

As indicated in the above figure, Israel’s investment in post-secondary education is especially low – 52% less than the average in OECD countries; Israel also spends much less on occupational training and non-academic degree programs. Thus, in 2021, the public expenditure on direct training for the job market amounted to 0.13% of GDP, compared to the average of 0.63% of GDP in OECD countries. When it comes to active labor policies, Israel ranks second from the bottom, with only the United States spending relatively less.

Despite the fact that in Israel higher education is subsidized, its investment per student is 33% lower than the average in OECD countries. This means fewer supplementary services like libraries and laboratories, lower investment in research and development and a higher student/instructor ratio.

הפוסט Per Student Investment in Education in Israel is Lower than the Average among OECD Countries הופיע לראשונה ב-Adva Center.

The nature of socio-economic data is that they become known with the passage of time – some after a few months and others after a year or two or more. In the meantime, the latest socioeconomic data for Israel published by state institutions – the Bank of Israel, the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the National Insurance Institute (NII) – are, at best, for 2021, while some are for 2020 and others for 2019.

And during those years, we were subject to another worldwide crisis with socio-economic implications – the Corona epidemic. That epidemic, which has yet to run its course, though it was shunted to the margins of the news by the sights and sounds of the Russian war against the Ukraine, caused the death of millions, the closure of numerous businesses, unemployment rates unknown since the 1929 crash, as well as huge government outlays for aid to individuals and businesses and, of course, on health.

At the same time there were individuals who not only were not adversely affected during the Corona crisis, but actually profited.

This was the case of the ten richest persons in the world, whose combined worth prior to the epidemic stood at 700 billion dollars, a sum that had doubled by 2022 to 1.5 trillion dollars.

Israel’s wealthy partake of the same phenomenon: according to the financial newspaper “The Marker,” the wealth of the 500 richest persons in Israel quadrupled over the last four years and grew by 32% between 2020 and 2021.

The figures presented below reflect the first chapters of the story of the epidemic, which is also a story of the widening of inequality in Israel and elsewhere. This, in hope that the war currently raging in eastern Europe ends quickly and will not become the main story of Israel: A Social Report next year.

הפוסט Israel – A Social Report 2022: The Inequality Epidemic Still Rages הופיע לראשונה ב-Adva Center.

Over the last years, doubts about the merits of academic education were frequently raised, claiming that an academic degree is no longer relevant to the job market. The common perception connecting education with success, lost its holding and the Y Generation stayed away from the colleges and universities.

Consequently, a variety of career tracks bypassing higher education evolved in the labor market. Yet the data was clear: even before the pandemic unemployment rates among persons with academic degrees was significantly lower, and their wages were higher.

The economic crisis created by the corona, exposed the employment market’s duality and the value of high education. Namely, the vast majority of persons with academic education kept their jobs while persons with high-school education (or less) and low wages, especially in the services industry, were let go in high numbers.

Now young adults are changing the picture. Instead of taking on temporary, low-paid positions that offer no job security or quality career path, they turn to education. Enrolment rates for highly demanded professions, accounting, neuroscience, and engineering peaked. The “corona economy” succeeded where the state that tried for many years to encourage study of these subjects, failed.   

The increase in enrolment to social arts faculties such as philosophy and history – fields were almost obliterated by the practical perception of high education – is especially encouraging.  This due to the inherent value of education, the development of basic skills of reading, writing and analysis, digital literacy, active citizenship, and the ability to integrate in the job market. Moreover, education has a cross-generational impact: the degree of the parents’ education has a direct link to their children’s chances to succeed in school and in their future careers.

The budget allocated to face the corona crisis includes funding of vocational training programs that the government is struggling to implement after years of neglect of the field. Indeed, one would hope that the crisis will bring about improvements in this field as well. Nevertheless, it is no less important to allocate funds to increase accessibility to higher education by funding academic institutions so that they can cater to larger number of students, formation of a support mechanism of scholarship and subsidies so that all of the students admitted – including those of low socioeconomic backgrounds – will complete their degrees. There is also a need to finance matriculation courses and create affordable alternatives to the psychometric exam prep industry so that marginalized populations will have a better chance of being admitted. Similarly, vocational training programs must also receive funding to address the needs of those who are unable or uninterested in pursuing an academic degree.    

The Arrangements Law and Corona Budget allocated tremendous amounts to the transportation system´s infrastructure. Yet, the best investment for Israel at this point is a “New Deal” of investment in education and in its human capital. This is an investment which will yield benefits for years to come, and to future generations. 

// The article was published originally in The Marker (in Hebrew)

הפוסט Let Them Learn: It Is the Time for a “New Deal” in Higher Education הופיע לראשונה ב-Adva Center.

Where is the other half of the age cohort? The report points to two circumstances:

1. Dropouts
In 2014, the most recent year for which complete figures are available, approximately one-fifth of the relevant age cohort – 19.5% — was not in school. The highest proportions of non-attendance were registered for Haredim – 45.7%, Bedouins residing in the Negev – 36.2%, Arabs (not counting Bedouin or Druze) – 19.7% and Druze – 15.5%. In East Jerusalem, according to an estimate for 2012/2013, the rate of non-attendance was 36% — like that of the Bedouins.

The main reason for non-attendance was dropping out. Between the 2013/2014 and 2014/2015 school years, 2.1% of tenth graders dropped out (1,981 students), 5.0% of 11^th graders dropped out (4,651 students) and 1.1% of twelfth graders dropped out (942 students), for a total of 7,574 drop-outs. The highest drop- out rates were to be found among new immigrants (since 2006) and Haredim: 16.2% of new immigrants and 15.2 % of Haredim dropped out in eleventh grade. More boys than girls dropped out.

To the drop-outs we need to add another group whose chances of matriculating are slim: young people under the charge of truant officers. According to figures published by the National Council for the Child, in 2013/2014 there were 38,200 young people under the charge of truant officers, 62% of them Jews and 32% of them Arabs.

Only about a third of these young people were enrolled in alternative educational frameworks: yeshivas or vocational schools operated by the Ministry of the Economy. In 2014, 19.2% of the drop-outs were to be found in Ministry vocational schools and 13.8% in yeshivas.

2. Operation of the majority of high schools in Israel’s socio-economic periphery by networks specializing in vocational education
The second answer to the question of “where are the other kids” is to be found in the fact that in a good many small, resource-poor localities, like development towns, the local authority transfers the operation of local high schools to external networks specializing in vocational education.

Figures for the two largest networks, ORT and Amal, reveal that in 2014, ORT operated a total of 99 high schools, 38 of which offered academic tracks, 58 technological tracks, and 72 vocational tracks. The picture is similar for the Amal network, which operated 60 high schools: in 21 it offered academic tracks, in 9 technological tracks and in 33 vocational tracks (Both networks are under the supervision of the ministries of Education and the Economy).

71% of the high schools operated by ORT and Amal are located in cities and towns in low socio-economic clusters: 35 in Arab localities, 43 in development towns, and 35 in other localities belonging to socio-economic clusters 1 through 5. In affluent localities, if there is a vocational high school, it is usually located in the low-income neighborhoods.

In vocational tracks, with the exception of the engineering track, success rates in the matriculation exams are lower than those of students following academic tracks.

3. The pressure to expand vocational education in Israel
In recent years, there has been considerable public pressure to expand vocational education. This pressure is surprising, as in 2014 about 40% of high school students were enrolled in vocational tracks, a proportion that is no lower than that in Western European countries.

It appears that the pressure to expand vocational education does not indicate a need for additional graduates of vocational tracks but rather the desire for a different kind of vocational education – for example, the kind of vocational education Germany has. In Israel, vocational education (with the exception of the engineering track) is a residual category, meaning that those enrolled in it were found to be unsuitable for the academic track. In a good many of the vocational tracks, studies are on a lower level than in academic tracks, their graduates do not receive diplomas recognized by employers as qualifying them for a job, and the students complete their studies without any practical training. As stated in a recent OECD report, graduates of these tracks have certificates that lead nowhere.

In Germany, in contrast, there is a long tradition of vocational studies accompanied by practical training in enterprises selected by the government. Students receive a salary and for many of them the practical training is the corridor to permanent employment at the workplace at the end of their studies. Salaries and employment conditions are determined by collective labor agreements, and the conditions for recognition at the end of the track are set jointly by employers and labor unions. After graduation, graduates can enroll in technological colleges and, after additional preparation, in universities.

If this is what persons pressuring to expand vocational education in Israel want, what is needed is not the expansion of existing vocational education but rather extensive reform: in the level of studies, in the supervision of the Ministry of Education, in labor legislation, in salaries, and in cooperation between employers and trade unions.

However, before embarking on such a project, one should ask whether this is the path that Israeli society really wishes to follow. Should we at an early age – the end of intermediate school – decide who to leadership, command and research and who to the assembly line and service occupations? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give all our young people a broad education, including a bachelor’s degree, and only then present them with options for their working lives?

הפוסט Where is the Other Half of the Age Cohort? Twelfth graders who don’t matriculate הופיע לראשונה ב-Adva Center.

הפוסט Survey of Bedouin Schools in the Negev הופיע לראשונה ב-Adva Center.