Two years after the corona burst into our lives, education staff - teachers, kindergarten teachers and assistants in 6-3 age groups and early childhood caregivers - are completely worn out.
Some have even left the profession.
At the same time, we are flooded with publications about the harm to children and adolescents - from the difficulties in learning through the zoom, through the sharp rise in emotional problems that the frameworks are unable to address, to the latent dropout of tens of thousands of students.
The system is in crisis which must be considered a national emergency.
And just as the health care system has received significant, if not sufficient, strengthening in budgets and standards in the last two years - so the government must now invest in strengthening the education system.
The emphasis should be on preschoolers.
Those that have only just come under the wings of the Ministry of Education, but the frameworks in which they study are in a real collapse, and many of them have recently closed or are about to close.
All the operators of the frameworks, both private and subsidized, report a massive abandonment of manpower and a huge difficulty in manning new teams.
And when the frameworks close and the staffs abandon, the main sufferers are the toddlers.
The fact that they can not express their distress in words should not make us forget what studies have long proven: early childhood - from birth to 3 - is the most sensitive and critical to human development, in all aspects.
Therefore, a paradigm reversal is required: precisely in this period of life, special investment must be made in education and quality care for children.
That is why the government did well when it recently transferred the responsibility for early childhood to the Ministry of Education, but with the responsibility - money must also come.
And a lot.
Most of the budget for 2022, we have been informed in recent days, will be allocated to the training of 10,000 caregivers who are already working in the frameworks.
This number is 25 times higher than the number of educators - 400 per year - who have been trained in government funding in the last decade.
This is a good omen for the first time - especially in a reality where 80 percent of staff wives in toddler settings have not gone through even one day of training for their job - but this is just the beginning.
Vocational training is one of the critical issues to be addressed in the field of early childhood education.
One does not have to look in the flashlight to see the close connection between the acute shortage of manpower and the collapse of dormitories, and the lack of training that leads to decent wages and provides tools for professional advancement and personal satisfaction.
Quality education, for all ages, requires a budget of billions.
If the government wants to fight the educational corona, which has harmed toddlers, children and youth, it must not waste another day: it must put its hand in its pocket, and invest in rehabilitating the system and building the future of the next generation.
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