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It turns out: schools will not be ready in time | Israel today

2020-07-29T20:55:43.282Z


| EducationOne month before the start of the school year: the budget has not been transferred, and the manpower to fill the capsules has not yet been recruited • Only about half of the institutions are computerized • and about 20% of the students without a computer • A teacher teaches her students from a distance // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon Since the beginning of the corona outbreak in Israel, the Ministry o...


One month before the start of the school year: the budget has not been transferred, and the manpower to fill the capsules has not yet been recruited • Only about half of the institutions are computerized • and about 20% of the students without a computer •

  • A teacher teaches her students from a distance // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

Since the beginning of the corona outbreak in Israel, the Ministry of Education has been preparing for the next school year, which will open in a month. However, in the field - things are far from ready. The to-do list is long, and even if it starts this morning - it will not be completed by September 1st. 

As part of the preparations for studies in the shadow of the Corona, the Ministries of Education and Finance have agreed on a budget of NIS 4.2 billion, but the budget has not yet been approved by the government and has therefore not been transferred to the Ministry of Education. As long as the budget is not transferred, it will not be possible to start the preparations - and within the framework of, among other things, tenders for the purchase of computers and means of protection. 

Archive // ​​Photo: Moshe Ben Simhon, newsenders, Paz Bar

According to the outline for the next school year, all fifth graders and up will learn through distance learning. This decision has two equipment level issues. The first is that tens of thousands of students do not have a computer or Internet connection. According to the chief economist, about 20% of the students live in households without a computer and 27% do not have an Internet connection at home. 

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The second problem is that only about half of the institutions in the education system (1,900 out of 3,600) are computerized, enabling distance learning with computers and the Internet. A sum of NIS 1.2 billion has been allocated to these two problems - but there is no chance that the Ministry of Education will be able to do so by the start of the school year. 

Also, from September 1, third- and fourth-grade students will study in capsules. Classes of 32 students will be divided into two halves, and if in the previous year one teacher was satisfied with this number of students - now two are required. In order to fill the classrooms with teachers, at least 15,000 teaching staff, teachers and assistants must be recruited. 

The recruitment, placement and placement process takes months when it comes to such a large mass of teachers. In this step, there is also a risk: the large absorption of staff members into the education system may lead to harmful elements infiltrating as well. "The list of concerns is large, very large," says S., a teacher and educator in an elementary school, "We are entering a crazy school year. First and foremost there is our fear as teachers of being infected, and secondly there will not be enough teachers to teach. Bible, math and English after being divided into two. It is impossible to get everyone to teach in the classroom, we are talking about education, not about clerical work. My fear is that this will be the lost year of the education system. "  

There are no guidelines

In the end, the education system is made up of many small institutions. Schools and local authorities are the ones who actually have to prepare the classrooms - but they have not yet received precise instructions on what to do. For example, the Ministry of Education announced that there would be a separation between classes and classes. This is not a simple logistical operation in which different areas and spaces need to be created, but the schools have not yet received this instruction.

The same goes for the teachers' room - the presence of all the teachers in the same space could lead to its shutdown if all the teachers go into isolation because of a sick teacher. The Ministry of Education does not yet have a directive to create secondary teachers' rooms, not to mention that there will be a shortage of classrooms in primary schools, due to the splitting of students, and schools will need time to prepare. 

The teachers' union attacked the return to school plan and Secretary-General Yaffa Ben-David instructed the teaching staff not to cooperate with the plan. "The plan for the corona routine is empty and does not address the hardships of the education system," "There was no reference to any problem raised by the professionals, and it seems that the program was intended to be a kind of fig leaf for failure in the education system," she said.

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2020-07-29

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