The Debate on Israel’s Education System is About Connection

Israel’s education system is at the center of a growing public debate, sparked by the Finance Ministry’s proposal to transfer responsibility for elementary schools and kindergartens from the state to local authorities. Against this backdrop, and at the request of Knesset Education Committee Chairman MK Tzvi Sukkot, the Knesset Research and Information Center published a new comparative report examining how 12 countries: the United States, Canada, France, Finland, Poland, Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, structure their education systems, focusing on who employs teachers and how salaries and working conditions are set.

The findings show that while most of the countries surveyed operate decentralized education systems, the mechanisms for hiring teachers and setting their pay remain largely centralized, governed either directly by the state or through a combination of national and local bodies, anchored in national legislation and collective agreements. France emerged as the country whose model most closely resembles Israel’s: public schools and kindergartens fall under state responsibility, with staff classified as civil servants whose pay is set by law. Denmark offers a contrasting model, with local authorities employing early-childhood, elementary, and middle-school staff, while high school teachers are employed directly by their schools.

The Finance Ministry’s proposal, echoed in several parties’ platforms, would shift responsibility for elementary schools and kindergartens to local authorities while keeping curriculum oversight with the state, a structure already used in Israel’s secondary education system, though its applicability to earlier education stages remains uncertain. The report also compared the share of students enrolled in public education across the countries studied. Israel ranks relatively low, with 76% of students in the public system, compared to 80–90% in most of the other countries surveyed. The Netherlands stands out as an exception, with public-school enrollment below 30% across all education stages, a legacy of church-run schools dating back to the 17th century. In Israel’s case, the lower share is largely explained by the Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) education system, which is privately operated and partially state-funded based on the proportion of core curriculum subjects taught.

This debate over how best to structure Israel’s education system is one that Amal Educational Network encounters directly in its work. In every local authority where Amal operates a high school, the network works to build synergy with the authority’s entire education system, from early childhood through secondary school, rather than functioning as a separate, disconnected link. By coordinating closely with municipal education departments and the other institutions operating within each authority, Amal aims to create a genuine educational continuum for students, one in which every stage builds on the one before it, instead of a patchwork of standalone systems.