Safeguarding the Mamlachti Vision: Amal Urges Holistic Education Policy

Israel’s Ministry of Education’s new directive on tefillin in secondary schools, alongside the High Court petition on discriminatory funding between the state and state‑religious streams, underlines how questions of religion, identity and budgets are reshaping the public system from above. These moves expose deep gaps of thousands of shekels per student in favor of the state‑religious system and illustrate how religious practice is being formally regulated in mamlachti schools, while the state itself acknowledges that funding is not equal. Together, they raise a fundamental question: what is the character of state education, and who gets to decide it.

Amal Educational Network links these developments and warns that they intensify pressure on principals and school communities torn between political demands, local pressures and professional pedagogical judgment. As a state‑democratic network whose half of its schools are in the Jewish mamlachti sector and the rest in Arab and other communities, Amal’s mission is to combine high‑quality scientific and technological education with deep civic education, rooted in Jewish heritage and democratic values. From this vantage point, Amal insists that any policy on religion in schools and any revision of funding formulas must strengthen, not erode, the civic, egalitarian essence of the state system.

Amal therefore calls on the next government to adopt a holistic, egalitarian state‑education policy that guarantees equal funding to all state schools and clearly protects their democratic, inclusive character. Such a policy must ensure that Jewish tradition is integrated in ways that respect pluralism and the diverse identities of all students, rather than subordinating the mamlachti system to sectoral or political pressures. Only in this way can state education defend its character in the face of pressures from above and from the field, and provide all children in Israel with a shared civic framework that unites Jewish and democratic values.