In the next few lines, a bold attempt will be made to write a few words about the unit for external programs in the Ministry of Education, the one that became the "Sarat Avi Maoz" this week. simple words Sentences that will consist of facts, data and question marks, in the hope that we will be able to contribute a little common sense in a loud conversation.
For years, external education, study and enrichment programs, over which the Ministry of Education had no supervision, infiltrated the education system.
The schools, those that obtained sources of funding from the local authority, from parents' payments or from fundraising, purchased external programs from a variety of parties from the business sector or from the third sector - that is, associations and organizations.
Everything was done without any control or supervision, neither on the content of the programs, nor on the inequality that was created, where a more affluent school gave its students the enrichment that a poor school could not give.
It was a hot potato, which the Ministry of Education was comfortable turning a blind eye to.
Over the years the individual apples have turned into a huge pile of potatoes, many arms and influence.
The one who knocked on the table was the State Comptroller, who in 2011 issued a very harsh report on the lack of supervision. The comptroller even brought examples of cases in which elements defined as a "cult" held an activity in schools in which "students used a technique involving mental risks for the students." The comptroller demanded to do Order in both the chaos and the resulting inequality.
Following the report, the Ministry of Education issued a general director's circular, with a sweeping directive that prohibited the introduction of external programs to schools without undergoing a control procedure.
However, within a few days, after an outcry arose from the field - both from the thousands of organizations that were already operating in the field and from the schools that were already used to the outsourcing method - the executive director's circular was shelved. The ministry also realized that external programs have a very positive potential. Many programs, which developed under the wings of creativity and the flight of free market forces, offered successful and much more attractive alternatives than the usual programs of the Ministry of Education.
Only the manager decides
Following this, in 2013 a unit for external programs and promoting partnerships was established in the pedagogical administration, headed by Michal Oz-Ari.
"The unit is responsible for developing and leading inter-sector dialogue processes in the units of the Ministry of Education, while imparting skills of sharing processes and creating a culture of participatory governance," as stated on the website of the Ministry of Education.
"The unit works to improve educational practice through an intelligent and professional combination of educational programs that support and strengthen the educational concept [...] The unit works to strengthen social-educational resilience through coordinated and integrated activity of the government, local government and civil society organizations."
The unit initiated lengthy discussions around an "intersectoral round table" on the issue.
After many beautiful words such as inclusion, involvement, transparency and sharing, it was decided, among other things, to establish the Ministry of Education's program database, which will be open to the general public, and in which all the programs operating in the field will be registered.
It was decided that school principals would only be able to purchase programs that are registered in the database.
The database is divided into two tracks: the green track where programs whose content was checked by the Ministry of Education were registered, and the blue track which included only an administrative registration procedure for programs that were not checked, but operate in the field.
The threshold conditions to enter the database were proper management of an association, compliance with the law and compliance with the goals of education as they appear in 11 sections of the state education law.
In practice, thousands of programs continued to operate in the education system (in the blue track) without any control or supervision, but only with administrative registration.
In August 2021, the outgoing government adopted the GFN program (administrative pedagogical flexibility) beginning with the current academic year 2021 (Decision No. 226).
The goal of Gepan is to expand the administrative autonomy of the schools and allow the principals to adapt the content of the study to the community. The school receives a budget according to its size and the socioeconomic status of the local authority in which it operates. In the poorer municipalities the Ministry of Education provides 97% of the budget, and in the more affluent municipalities Only 65% of the budget, and the rest falls on the local authority.
With this budget, the director can purchase study programs, sessions and teacher trainings from the program database or other needs of the school, such as laboratory equipment.
In order to increase supervision and relieve administrators of the bureaucratic burden of tenders, the Ministry of Education conducted two huge pool tenders and conducted an administrative and pedagogical examination of the tens of thousands of programs that entered the tender.
In total, 10,592 programs passed the tender and entered the database in the green route.
In the blue route there are still 12,096 programs that did not go through the tender, or did not enter the tender, or were not reviewed, and that are able to enter the next tenders.
In the Ministry of Education's budget, which was directed to GFN and distributed to the schools - for a total of about 2 billion shekels - the principals are only allowed to purchase programs that are in the green track. The principals can still also purchase programs from the blue track with funds from the local authority, parents' payments or donations.
increase transparency
In the last week, there was an uproar from heads of authorities and school principals, who made it clear that they will not allow Abi Maoz to introduce racist and homophobic content into the education system.
But anyone who has not only argued but bothered to check how the unit for external programs works, knows that its entire essence is a choice made by the managers in coordination with the local authority, out of an almost endless sea of programs.
The most that Avi Maoz could possibly do is to transfer some of the programs from the green route to the blue route or vice versa.
Administrators will be able to continue to purchase programs in the blue track, not with the funds of the Ministry of Education, just as was the case before the GFN program. Even if Avi Maoz decides, say, to put into the database a program that, mercifully, talks about father and mother, and not about mother and mother, he will have no way Force the school administrators to purchase it. Nor did anyone entrust Deputy Minister Avi Maoz with two billion shekels, as claimed.
Because these two billion are not at the headquarters of the unit, but are distributed to the principals of the schools, who alone choose what to do with them.
That's why the "rebellion" is ridiculous.
It would be more correct to define it as a "campaign".
In the same way, the decision to uproot one unit from the Ministry of Education and transfer it to the authority of a member of Knesset from a single faction, who represents extreme positions on a variety of issues, also according to many on the right and religious Zionism, is ridiculous, not to mention outrageous.
What Avi Maoz must do, and this is what he claims he is going to do, is to lead a process of increasing the transparency of the program pool.
The very establishment of the database was already a huge step forward taken by the Ministry of Education towards transparency, but the situation today is still far from satisfactory.
For more than ten hours I dug into this database of the plans in the green track and the blue track.
It has everything in all, many enrichment programs in the field of science and mathematics, but also many programs on controversial topics, which only after deep digging can you understand who is behind them and who finances them.
So, for example, there are ten programs offered by a body called "Ma'ainyich - Lev Yam'er".
Six of them are in the green track, that is, they have been inspected by the Ministry of Education, and four are in the blue track.
The content of the programs includes a project on joy and leadership development.
There is no explicit word about Judaism there, but searches outside the database itself reveal that these are programs from the creator of Chabad. Some of the programs are intended for the religious and state sector and not only for the ultra-Orthodox. There is nothing wrong with Chabad, but it is appropriate that you include a Chabad program in the framework (and certainly a framework that is not religious or ultra-orthodox) will be while informing the students' parents and obtaining their consent.
In the same way, the database contains three training programs for the educational staff of the Rossnig Center for Education and Dialogue, an interfaith organization that promotes an inclusive society for all religions.
Only a deeper examination reveals that among the program's partners and financiers there are also Christian elements of various churches in Sweden and Germany.
Isn't it requested, before such a program enters the school, that the parents know who are all the factors behind it and what content will be served to their children?
"Fried Green Tomatoes"
The database contains programs of the traditional movement and the reform movement, alongside programs of the Temple Mount and Temple Heritage Foundation.
As long as the programs operate within the framework of the law, it is not true and it is also impossible to remove them from the database.
Since not all parents are given the opportunity to dig for hours in the reservoir like I did, and understand what Torah is being beaten into their child, the bowl should be turned upside down.
Parents should not accidentally find out which program their sons and daughters participated in.
The administrators' duty is to inform the parents about any external program they have purchased or received for free, to describe what the program is and who funds it.
A student will be able to enter and participate in the program's activities only after his parents have expressed written consent to this.
The Knesset channel
To understand why parental consent is required in advance, let's delve into one example - a dialogue program of the Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum.
The program, which is on the green track, operates in 200 schools and is intended for the state and state-religious sector.
According to what is written in the Ministry of Education's database, the purpose of the program is to bring the students together in a direct and human way with the Palestinian "other" and to hold a discussion as a way of reconciliation between the nations.
In a dialogue meeting, led by two members of an Israeli and a Palestinian forum, the students are exposed to a model of reconciliation: "The members of the forum, who lost what is dearest to them, are in fact living proof that it is possible to transform feelings of anger and revenge and work together for dialogue and hope."
The program also offers staff training for pre-meeting preparation sessions and post-meeting processing.
The program is offered for free and there is no money, perhaps because those who finance it with hundreds of thousands of shekels a year are the US government (through USAID) and the European Union.
We checked the preparation program as it is presented on the forum's website.
There they raise various questions that students can ask, and offer some answers.
"Among the Palestinians, children are educated to hate. We see on television children practicing how to kill us. We do educational activities like this. Do we do such an educational activity on the Palestinian side as well?", a question that a student might ask is presented in the written program.
Memorial event, "The Israeli-Palestinian Bereaved Families Forum", photo: Yehoshua Yosef
And this is the answer: "There is no 'educational' program for hatred, but because of the wars and vulnerabilities that have occurred over many years, and which are still ongoing, hatred exists on both sides," they offer to answer there, and also "there are many, many Palestinian families who teach their children the values of human love, respect to others[...] However, they are a people who strive for their freedom - and this is an important value that they instill in their children, just like ours. We can hope that they are not educated to hate, but reality brings them together with great frustration that causes some of them, at certain ages and out of desperation, to choose in the way of violent resistance".
This is how the Israeli Ministry of Education allows foreign governments to enter the schools and express understanding for Palestinian violence.
News 12 announced this week that at the "Hoof Hasharon Joint Education High School" the existence of a meeting with the Israeli-Palestinian family forum was hidden from the parents.
In the stratified diary, the date of the event is recorded under the heading "fried green tomatoes".
Only after complaints from the parents about the mysterious name was a message sent to the parents that it was a meeting with the forum.
As of today, the Ministry of Education does not rule out programs because they are funded by foreign governments, so the tomato stew continues to bubble in the pan.
Careful, boomerang
In the Ministry of Education, by the way, no plan has ever been published outside the database, but in every case of a complaint or publication in the media, the plan is reviewed.
It seems that it would be difficult to impossible to prove that certain programs are operating against the law.
At the same time, it is of course important to maintain freedom of expression and administrative-educational freedom for the schools and parents.
What's more, any intervention and disqualification of a plan by political parties from one camp will result in the future disqualification of another plan, when the opposite camp will hold the wheel of power.
It is better to leave the market free and open, but it is necessary to ensure that it is much more transparent.
If parents want their child to meet a transgender woman in kindergarten or elementary school, as proposed by the "Transitions" program, which is in the blue track in the Ministry of Education's database, no one has the option to prevent it, not even to Honorable Deputy Minister Avi Maoz.
To the same extent, introducing such a program into the school or kindergarten without doing so in full transparency and with parental consent in advance, as is currently the case, is also unacceptable.
In the end, it is to be hoped that most administrators show responsibility and choose programs in a way that suits the community spirit of the school's parents, and while exposing the students to the variety of voices in Israeli society in a balanced way.
And still, by all means, be transparent and don't allow agenda-promoting organizations, from all political and religious ends, to hide under misleading names.
You should also consider banning foreign countries from introducing education programs to Israeli children.
We have enough of our own.
And I wish we could raise the next generation with less arguing, and with a developed political consciousness alongside involvement and contribution to society.
At the current state of the rant level it seems like an impossible task.
were we wrong
We will fix it!
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