Yogev Gradus, who is in charge of budgets at the Ministry of Finance, warned today (Tuesday) at the Eli Hurvitz Conference on Society and Economy: "If we take labor productivity characteristics and calculate them according to the composition of the population, the standard of living in Israel will be similar to that of Eastern Europe."
Gerdos said during the conference: "Today we are almost 10 million residents. This unusual increase creates a strain on infrastructure. If we take labor productivity characteristics and calculate them according to the composition of the population, the standard of living in Israel will be similar to that of Eastern Europe. The gap stems from high fertility and low labor productivity, so improving the level of skills is expected to be one of the engines for raising the standard of living for all of us.
The second rule for improving the standard of living is improving the education system.
School classroom, photo: Meir Partosh
"65% real increase in investment per student, but there has been no objective improvement in the level of students, which we were informed of only recently when we saw that we went back 20 years. In recent years, we have invested a lot in the public education system and have only gone backwards. But in a few decades it won't even be our main problem. In another 50 years, 50% of first graders will be members of the Haredi sector. The rate of those with a matriculation certificate is 5%."
"Education must be of high quality"
He added: "Studies show that it is almost impossible to reduce the gaps that have accumulated in the education system. The investment of huge budgets has proven ineffective, neither in the public sphere nor in the ultra-Orthodox education system, which is not supervised. Increasing wages or increasing hours alone won't solve the problem.
"Education must be of high quality and relevant to the employment market. The demographic crisis is already a fact that does not depend on any vote in the Knesset. The direction the education system takes will dictate the direction the country takes. There is a need to make a profound change in the system so that we do not go backwards."
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