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The Minister of Education promises: "The school year will open on time; will it be perfect? ​​No" | Israel today

2020-08-08T12:58:21.133Z


| Israel this week - a political supplementGalant is unmoved by the closure threats and Ministry of Health scenarios, and sends a message to millions of parents: "We have reached an optimal solution, even if not perfect" • In an interview he explains why he decided to leave 11-10 year olds away from home. From his children) "Being an education minister was my ambition - contrary to what is being said." Galant Photo:  Oren Ben Hakon Ed...


Galant is unmoved by the closure threats and Ministry of Health scenarios, and sends a message to millions of parents: "We have reached an optimal solution, even if not perfect" • In an interview he explains why he decided to leave 11-10 year olds away from home. From his children)

  • "Being an education minister was my ambition - contrary to what is being said." Galant

    Photo: 

    Oren Ben Hakon

Education Minister Yoav Galant certainly did not imagine, upon entering the world of politics, that an unknown virus, discovered somewhere in China, would be his biggest challenge. But two months since taking office, Galant's biggest war is to allow the school year to open in one outline or another, after he has been on his hind legs for the past month in order to prevent the closure of the Great Freedom school frameworks.

"Every time they wanted to stop the program (summer schools) I objected," Galant said in an interview with Israel This Week. "It gave a million families the opportunity to work, make a living, get back to routine. It's a real success, out of a problematic situation we reached." We allowed five weeks of continuous studies and summer camps, the economy received welfare, the parents received a solution. " 

But summer was just the appetizer, given the second wave that is hitting Israel (and a third wave expected in winter). The school year, which opens in about three and a half weeks, will be unlike anything we have known. According to the outline approved by the government, classes will be held in kindergartens and first and second grades as usual, without half grades or rotation, and students will study six days a week. Grades 3 and 4 will be taught in groups of up to 18 students for five days a week. In fifth grades and above, they will study mainly online, from home, but an attempt will be made to bring the students to two days of classroom study. Meaning - children aged 11-10 will be left to study alone at home, a decision that has taken quite a few parents by surprise, claiming that it is delusional and disconnected because children of this age are not mature enough.

"The state can put solutions to this complex situation up to a certain order of magnitude, it cannot do everything," Minister Galant defended the decision. "We preferred things for pedagogical and economic reasons, from the youngest age to the older. The younger the student, the more personal he needs to study and the parents have to be allowed to go to work. In the third and fourth grades we insisted that they study, and the result was a division into half grades. Unable to do it (split of fifth and sixth grades) physically. There is not enough study space and budget. Therefore the solution we gave is reasonable.

"We instructed that any solution that would be an internal solution of the school or the local authority that would allow more school days - we would support it. In some places parents of fifth-graders may have to stay one more day at home to help their children. If the child is two days a week "At school and now he has to be home for three days, it could be that within those three days, one day the student will be home but at the tutelage of one of the parents in order to allow distance learning better. With no choice this parent will give up a day's work."

"I am the Minister of Education of all sectors of all religions and with all perceptions." Studies in the Corona Age // Photo: Yossi Zeliger

We meet Galant at his office in Tel Aviv, after he had already done an early fitness workout and traveled an hour and a half from his home in Amikam. On the table is a mask with a print of the emblem of the State of Israel and dozens of pages of presentations and data.

Galant sees running the education system at a young age as a condition for running the economy. According to him, the cost of the Sabbath is around NIS 300 million, so for him the investment is worth it. But he also does not know what winter is expected to bring. His original plan was to teach half-classes (up to 18 students) in kindergartens and first and second grades as well. And because of the shortage, there is even talk of establishing kindergartens within middle schools. However, a document from the Ministry of Health stated that there is no need for half-classes at these ages. 

"Thousands of teachers need to be recruited"

All of this may save a lot of headache and budget now, but if in the winter it is decided to return to half classes in all ages (as was the case in the first wave), there will be no choice but to leave kindergarten and first and second grade students at home. 

"A Common Challenge." Distance learning // Photo: Ami Shumen

"We held our discussions with all parties - health, finance, mayors, teachers' organizations and more," Galant said of the way the decisions were made. "We proposed a more stringent alternative - to study in half grades (up to 18 students) from kindergarten to fourth grade. This, in terms of teacher recruitment and other means, reached a cost of about 9 billion shekels.In the end, the Ministry of Health announced that in its view it is right to operate the education system so that preschoolers up to second grade will study in whole groups as before, as a result of the disease At these ages it is lower. " 

Were there economic considerations as well? 

"I do not know. I take the Ministry of Health seriously. This thing was brought to the attention of the government and approved unanimously by the government. From that moment on we are running on this format." 

But what will you do if in the winter there is an outbreak and the kindergartens and first and second grades have to be split as well? 

"I made it clear to the government and I make it clear to you, the classrooms cannot be divided in time, division requires at least two months of preparation. Thousands of teachers need to be recruited, classrooms doubled." 

That means you will have to rotate and leave children and parents at home. 

"Once we have made the move, it is not possible to return to a situation where we move to half-classes in a place that was not prepared for it."

For the study strata that have been split into half-grades (3-4), the Ministry of Education will have to recruit about 15,000 teachers to fill the classes. This means that the people who will teach your children will be less professional, and some will not be able to teach the disciplines like arithmetic, English, language and Bible. But in Corona, pedagogy is pushed aside and what is interesting is the operational goal. 

"We have enough manpower potential to double the teaching staff in third and fourth grades," Galant says confidently. "Some teachers will be recruited from the education system by increasing the percentage of jobs. Some will be education supporters, ie people qualified to teach, trained. In education, tourist guides, teaching students who are in the final stages of training and more. " 

The entry of a large number of teachers or counselors into the education system in such a short time and under pressure, may lead to those with a criminal record infiltrating it. Do you go to bed and get up with the problems and responsibilities? 

"I'm used to being responsible all my life, I did it as a commander. Sometimes it ends in operational success and sometimes at heavy prices. But I caution, in a system where 2.5 million people, if at any given moment there is no fault, a sign that the system does not report to you. "Faults. If anyone thinks we will do everything perfectly - the answer is no. We also did not invent the corona."

Closing gaps of a generation 

Distance learning, from fifth grade and up (including middle and high schools), forces the Ministry of Education to deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of students (almost a quarter of a million) do not have a computer or tablet at home (what the Ministry of Education calls "end means"). Many other students live in a home that does not have an internet connection. This means that those students will not be able to learn optimally from a distance, and while their peers are advancing in the material they may be left behind. 

Demonstrator in Balfour // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

Although the Ministry of Education has allocated NIS 1.2 billion for distance learning, this amount is supposed to fund not only end-to-end means for students but also ICT for many schools that do not have equipment, distance teacher training and more. "We are investing more than a billion shekels in the whole issue of digital infrastructure, but it is still not enough," says Galant.

"On September 1 there will be students without a computer. We got a big problem in a short schedule, and we will solve it. Not everything will be solved on the first day, some things will be throughout the year. We give computers to schools, and they are the ones who lend them to students as they lend books. Not with the individual but with the schools. " 

How will you deal with tens of thousands of teachers who do not know how to teach remotely, some of whom do not even know how to run computer software? Do you, for example, know how to operate a zoom? 

"Even if I did not know once, then I had a training period and studied. I was with the children at home in quarantine so everything I did not know I completed, they helped. It is the need of the hour because the alternatives are lack of learning. We do the best we can and we produce good solutions in teacher training "We are expected to jump the study in Israel in the field of technology and distance learning by a leap that was not there, we will close gaps of a generation, and this is in line not only to the corona period." 

But the gaps between strong and weak students have always been, take for example the Pisa report - among Hebrew-speaking students the gaps in achievement between high and low school students are 82 points in the sciences. 

"I do my best to close these gaps as soon as possible. Online learning also has the advantage that you can give each child the best teacher because learning is distance. We take lectures from the Ministry of Education and put them into lesson plans, and then the lesson is always available. In addition, there are learning programs with an interactive set-up and monitoring - you know which student had difficulty with what and what to concentrate effort on. This year will be a transition year because we dealt mainly with operations, but the main issue is pedagogy, ie education. "

"Hope for a full term"

Galant is not a veteran political actor. He came to the Likud after joining Moshe Kahlon's All of Us party, where he served as Minister of Construction and Housing. He was then appointed Minister of Aliyah and Absorption, ran in the Likud primaries and placed in the top ten. All the while staring at the defense portfolio but forced to see it fall into the hands of Bnei Gantz. 

IDF forces in the Golan // Photo: Eyal Margolin - Ginny

"Being the Minister of Education was my ambition, contrary to what is said," he emphasizes, "only if I had said it before then I probably would not have been Minister of Education. Fortunately, the relationship between the Prime Minister and me is such that there are many things said over many years in four Eyes and stayed that way. " 

Why education? 

"Because I think that in every country, certainly Israel, without education there is no economy and no security and no other things, and if you ask me what education is - it is the real security. It is your ability to effectively and meaningfully direct the country. I hope I will be here for a full term." 

As an educator, do you think the demonstrations in Balfour should go into citizenship classes? 

"I think that getting into current affairs is a phenomenon that leads to a politicization that I do not want within the education system. Otherwise the position is a biased position, here or there. I think educational is not the right situation. 

"As for the demonstrations themselves - I think there is a disproportion between the scope of the phenomenon and the way it is treated. It is quite clear that there is no equitable behavior between the coverage and treatment of phenomena that are against the right and phenomena that are against the left. 

"For example, the law stipulates that anyone who harms the honor of the state flag or the emblem of the state emblem or uses it, is liable to imprisonment for up to three years. I ask myself if this is what was done in this context and I ask myself if this is what would have been done "Another factor. I think the effects of disregarding the symbols of the state and inappropriate treatment are not an art or an expression of freedom but a violation of the law." 

Speaking of controversial issues, we have not heard you, as Minister of Education, come out against conversion therapies. 

"I am the Minister of Education of all students from all sectors, from all religions and with all perceptions. I accept every person as he is. Point. I am blind to genders, worldviews and sexual orientations. It is transparent to me." 

If invited, will you come to meet the members of "Iggy", the proud youth movement?

"Probably".

"Let Nasrallah beware of mistakes"

Galant, as one of the senior ministers, sees how every day the unity government finds itself in frictions that shorten its days. The budget issue is the main one, and Galant is worried that the continuation of the dispute will lead to damage to the functioning of the system. "I call on Bnei Gantz to do what is required of him, to show responsibility and transfer the state budget as early as this coming Sunday. If there is no budget, the first thing that will be harmed is education and with it security, welfare and health." 

Why insist on a one-year budget if there are only three months left?

"The most problematic thing in the budget for a year and a half is the lack of a revenue forecast in the far part of the year. This will require extensive cuts and budget restraint right now. This is a very unhealthy thing for both the people and the Israeli economy." 

Do not you feel that there is a political interest here?

 "I think the circumstances all over the world are very difficult. You do not know what the next day will look like in many ways so the game is reversed. We should have been now that the budget has been passed by the government." 

Will the government fall because of this?

"I hope not. The last thing we need is an election. I very much hope that blue and white will show responsibility and allow the budget to be transferred immediately, and will not use the citizens of Israel and education as a tool in a political struggle, I think it is very inappropriate."

How about the collaboration with Blue and White? 

"There is a big problem, I think there is a political and not a matter-of-fact conduct here on their part. The whole process is very problematic. I would like to see a unified body that operates regardless of the political decision, and it does not look like that." 

By the way, what is it like to work with Gabi Ashkenazi, after everything that happened between you and the Harpaz affair?

 "Everything that needs to work we work. With friends I paddle at sea Friday morning at sea. I work with others." 

As a former security man (who has not yet given up on the Ministry of Defense) and a cabinet member, Galant is connected to developments in all sectors and concerned about the ongoing Iranian involvement with our neighbors. "The heaviest issue is the Iranian operation in two directions - one is the Iranian attempt to take control of the Middle East that did not stop even during the corona: the Iranians also control large parts of Iraq, considerable parts of Yemen, Lebanon through Hezbollah and make efforts to take over Syria.

Galant, this week // Photo: Oren Ben Hakon

"The main effort is to acquire nuclear weapons. Under the auspices of terrorism throughout the Middle East, including friction between Israel and its neighbors, Hezbollah and other militias want to buy a time when they will acquire nuclear weapons. Therefore, the overall context needs to be seen. 

"We will not allow them to open a second Hezbollah front in the Golan Heights and we will not allow Syrian soil to be a weapon of war against Lebanon. For these things we may pay a heavy price. They have more than 100,000 missiles and we can not afford a similar situation in Syria. Will be, so we are determined in the matter.We have very great power and we will know to interrupt anything that threatens us.This thing does not work without friction in some cases.

"If Nasrallah succeeds, he makes a mistake and drags us into war - Lebanon will pay a heavy price. There will be no situation where Israeli citizens, Israeli children, are harmed in Israel and we behave gently. We will take off our gloves, and we need to know that."

Why do we not take care of the octopus head itself?

"I take the Iranian threat seriously. Today there are only two factors in the world that are really fighting against Iran. One is Israel and the other is the United States. "The sanctions it has imposed are very significant and very deterrent, and when the United States decides to act, then it is acting. Suleimani's frustration is a clear example of a successful move at the operational-tactical level."

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2020-08-08

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