The Ministry of Education is trying to broadcast business as usual, but anyone who has children in the education system feels like it is closing down.
Sick students, isolated students, and frontal studies are canceled and moved back to zoom.
This week the Ministry of Education announced that "more than 90% of students and members of education staff are not in isolation" - and the figure may be true, but that still does not mean we can find them in kindergartens and schools.
As a result, we dived deep into the data to put the versions in order: Is the entire education system open, or is it better to close the schools already?
2,445,522 students in the education system
This figure also includes about 539,000 children aged 6-3 in kindergartens, about 1,015,000 elementary school students (Sunday-Friday) and about 890,000 elementary and post-primary school students (7th-12th grade).
76,522 students with corona
The number of students infected with the virus continues to break records, although they will eventually be considered recovering and join the isolation-free group.
Medical experts estimate that the true number is much higher, but not reported due to those who are not tested.
Thus, for example, even though the winter matriculation season is now at its peak, and the next day (January 20) there will be a matriculation exam in mathematics - many high schoolers fear that a positive result in the Corona test will prevent them from taking the exam, and are simply not tested
250-103 thousand students in isolation
Although the number of students in solitary confinement is officially about 103,000, in practice the number is much higher, double and even triple.
The reasons for this are varied: First, in kindergartens there are no Corona trustees (there are only in primary schools) and there is no one who collects and reports the data.
The same is true of middle schools and high schools, where the task is left to desperate teachers and principals - some of whom are sometimes sick as well.
Second, the UAV, which collects data from Corona trustees, does not take over all reports and answers only a third of calls. That many parents do not do so, for fear and lack of knowledge.
400-250 thousand students in distance learning
The Ministry of Education does not know how to provide data on the number of students who have moved to distance learning, and among educators it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of students stay at home every day.
For example, in Bat Yam, all the upper elementary schools have moved to distance learning, and there are about 6,000 students.
In Givat Brenner Regional Council, too, studies have been zoomed in due to a shortage of staff.
In general, there is almost no elementary school that does not close classrooms one after the other and learning shifts to zoom, due to lack of staff, outburst in the community and a variety of other reasons.
Distance learning (illustration), Photo: Liron Moldovan
1,373,389 students who are not exempt from isolation
56% of education system students (1,373,389 students) who have not been vaccinated or recovered, or who have been vaccinated only in the first dose, are not isolated, and are therefore sent to seven days of isolation after each exposure to a verified patient (or if blue).
Now that it has been decided to shorten the isolation to only five days, they will return to the system much faster - but risk a routine of isolation with each exposure to a verified patient.
On the other hand, about 44% of students are exempt from isolation after being vaccinated in the second dose or falling ill in Corona and recovering.
That is, there are currently 1,072,133 students who can come to school even if they have met a verified patient, provided they have undergone a rapid antigen test (home or institutional).
According to parents, educators, the Ministry of Education and Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton, for these students the education system must be kept running.
However, some do not arrive and are forced to stay home due to lack of staff.
In the distribution among the exemption exemptions, there are actually more students in the upper classes (post-primary, middle and high schools) than in the lower classes (kindergartens and primary schools).
Meaning: In most of the upper classes it is appropriate and necessary to leave the studies open, but in the lower classes there is a real difficulty due to the multiple entrances to isolation.
13,364 teaching staff Corona patients
This is one of the big problems of the education system, which has not created a reserve that can replace the sick teachers, and now there is no one to come in and teach in their place in the classrooms.
In the past, the Ministry of Education recruited about 13,000 teaching assistants to strengthen the system, and went on to teach in grades 1-4, which were divided into capsules, but last June they were fired and now there is a severe shortage of manpower.
Although the Ministry of Education offers school principals the use of national counselors, in view of the growing demand they are just a drop in the ocean.
Corona tests in schools (archive), Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
207,857 teaching staff are exempt from isolation
77% of teaching staff are exempt from isolation - an impressive figure of immunization, thanks to teachers' organizations that demanded throughout the epidemic to vaccinate teaching staff.
207,857 out of 268,857 teaching staff are vaccinated or recovering and therefore exempt from isolation - and even if a sick student is found in class, they can teach in school after a negative result from a home antigen test.
4,354 teaching staff in isolation
These are teaching staff, some of whom are not vaccinated, so following exposure to a student or staff member with corona, they must go into seven-day isolation.
Some are parents who have declared themselves to be going through isolation along with their child or sick child.
In contrast, vaccinated teaching staff can get out of isolation immediately after a home antigen test.
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