The attempt to integrate ultra-Orthodox students into academic studies has encountered many difficulties, both because of the scholastic gaps, in the absence of core studies, and also because of cultural and value gaps surrounding difficulty with content and the mixing of men and women.
As long as the State of Israel continues to allow ultra-Orthodox society to educate its children without core studies, it is hard to believe that the mass integration of ultra-Orthodox in the job market will only be possible through academic training.
But who said you have to be a doctor of physics to bring home bread?
Today it is possible to make a decent living flying drones, operating cranes, picking locks, being a driving instructor, being a wit or animator.
Haredim in the labor market (illustration), photo: Dodi Vaaknin
An ultra-orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem (archive).
There is no employment, photo: Oren Ben Hakon
These professions do not require four years of study at the academy, but rather short-term professional courses.
Most of them also do not require a high school diploma, so they fit like a glove into the current reality of ultra-Orthodox society.
Such courses already operate in the field with the support of the state, but only a few get to participate in them.
In the last three and a half years, only 3,400 ultra-Orthodox participated in professional training.
Why?
Because, in general, the State of Israel does not invest enough in professional courses in all sectors.
"Until the end of the 1990s, there was a very massive investment by the state in professional courses," says Tali Nir, CEO and founder of the 121 Association - Engine for Social Change. "Every year there were a hundred thousand people who participated in professional courses at the expense of the state.
Since then they began to dry up the professional trainings and five years ago it reached a low of 4,000 people per year who participated in state subsidized professional trainings.
Israel stands at the bottom of the OECD table in terms of investment in employment programs."
Employment Bureau (archive), photo: Yehoshua Yosef
According to data collected by the 121 association, in the academic year 2015 the State of Israel invested NIS 12.4 billion in the academy. 6.5 billion of which was invested in the academic teaching itself for the benefit of 337 thousand students. About half of the population in Israel does not go to the academy at all, but the State of Israel invests much less in it. In professional training Over the past decade, the state has invested between NIS 100,000 and NIS 260,000 each year. In 2021, which was a record year for investment in professional training due to the Corona crisis, 29,202 workers participated in professional training. In the first half of 2022, there was a decrease and only 7,000 people were trained in six months .
"The vocational trainings can be a very significant lever for this issue of integrating ultra-Orthodox in the employment market," says Attorney Avraham Houston, Vice President of the K.M.H Fund (Orthodox Professional Promotion).
"The weakness of the field of professional training is ours. If the state decides to invest more in professional training and embrace the field, then there will definitely be a real change here."
The full article tomorrow in the "Israel this week" supplement
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