Financial Education Enters Amal’s Classrooms

As the 2026–2027 school year opened on September 1, financial education became a mandatory subject for the first time in Israeli schools, taught in grades 9 and 10 to roughly 2.6 million students nationwide. The curriculum, developed by the Ministry of Education together with the Bank of Israel and the Capital Markets Authority, covers personal and household budgeting, the economic consequences of consumption habits, saving, foreign currency, and real estate investment. Amal Educational Network’s schools are part of this historic shift, introducing our students to the tools they will need to navigate one of the most demanding economic environments in the developed world.

The urgency is impossible to ignore. Israel in 2026 competes each year for the title of the world’s most expensive country when prices are measured against incomes, housing costs have surged across the country, and the dream of buying an apartment now depends on unprecedented mortgage debt. Israel ranks second in the OECD for the share of workers earning low wages, and years of privatization and reduced public spending have eroded education, healthcare, welfare, and public transportation, leaving Israel’s civilian expenditure more than NIS 190 billion a year behind other developed nations. Against this backdrop, young Israelis are entering adulthood needing to compare prices, negotiate contracts, and even open investment portfolios earlier than any previous generation.

For Amal, financial literacy is not simply a practical life skill, it is inseparable from the civic values at the core of our educational mission. Millions of Israelis are responsible, hardworking people who nonetheless cannot achieve economic stability, because household outcomes are shaped as much by government policy as by individual choices: the quality of public services, wage norms, and the regulation of corporations and banks. Amal students learn to manage a budget and understand markets, and just as importantly, they learn that a healthy economy is the product of an engaged citizenry demanding accountable policy. That is the civic education Amal has always championed, and financial literacy is now one more classroom where it comes to life.