One party is taking our kids’ education seriously

Israeli voters who made aliyah from places like the US, the UK, or Canada, and who voted in elections in those countries, will notice a number of differences from their Old Countries. The multiplicity of parties. The fact that here in Israel it’s quite normal to be asked who you’re voting for by a complete stranger. And also, the near-absence of debate about the issues that matter to us all on a daily basis – the economy, health, and education.

The public debate is focused (for good reasons) on security, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.; and (for unfortunate reasons) on the personal character and integrity of the candidates – the incumbent prime minister above all.

But I can’t be the only parent of young children wondering just when we’re going to see a government that prioritizes education. Brits of a certain age will remember that Tony Blair came to promising that his three priorities as new prime minister would be: “Education. Education. Education.” His argument was compelling. A country with a good education system is not only benefitting the children involved, but the society at large. The economy will benefit from a better educated population. The impact will also ultimately be seen in things like health outcomes and crime statistics.

And let’s be honest, despite the truth of the hasbara line that “Israel’s only natural resources are the brains and talents of its people,” our education system is in dire condition. Israeli high school test results have long been below the OECD average.

One particularly high-profile problem is that only seven percent of ultra-Orthodox children are studying in the public education system. The rest are in private ultra-Orthodox institutions which make a point of not teaching boys math, science or English. And it gets worse. These “private” schools, churning out unemployable young men, are nevertheless receiving public funding, thanks to the capitulation of this prime minister to his coalition partners.

So is anyone actually proposing to fix this growing education crisis? Well, yes actually. B’Yachad, Naftali Bennett’s party, has a whole section on its website (in English too!) devoted to this issue. And yes I know, in Israel we’ve become accustomed to judging parties by where they stand on settlements, or on whether they will sit with this or that other party. But if you’re parent of young kids – and frankly, even if you’re not – shouldn’t it also matter that a party has thought seriously about education, and bothered to put forward concrete plans?

And B’Yachad’s diagnosis of the problem might well sound familiar to any parent navigating the system: a Ministry of Education in Jerusalem that micromanages every school in the country, principals with almost no real authority, and teachers stretched thin and undervalued. 70% of day-to-day decisions about a child’s schooling are currently made centrally by the ministry — roughly double the share typical in other developed countries.

Their proposed fix is a genuine decentralization: strip the ministry down to a regulator that sets standards and measures outcomes, and hand budgets, staffing and scheduling decisions to local authorities and school principals instead. They’d also replace the current funding formula, which allocates money by classroom and teaching hours, with a “money follows the child” model that gives extra funding to students from the periphery, from weaker socioeconomic backgrounds, or with special needs.

On the ultra-Orthodox education question specifically, B’Yachad’s proposal is suitably blunt: any institution that wants public funding has to be state-run and state-supervised, teaching a shared core curriculum, full stop. Schools that want to stay outside that system are free to do so, but as fully private institutions getting no money from the state. The party sets itself a concrete target too: moving 90% of students currently in ultra-Orthodox institutions under state supervision within eight years.

The plan also reaches earlier and later than most education debates usually go — proposing state oversight and subsidies for early-childhood frameworks from birth to age three (a large share of Israeli toddlers are currently in settings with no state supervision at all!), and turning 12th grade into a dedicated “values and leadership” year for every student, alongside a push to roll AI-assisted personalized tutoring into classrooms so teachers can focus more on mentorship than rote instruction.

It’s tempting to be cynical. Politicians will always have nice-sounding proposals in their policy platforms, right? Wrong, actually. In Israel at least. Many parties have no detailed policy platforms at all! The Likud has relied on the (now thoroughly tarnished) star power of Benjamin Netanyahu for several elections cycles, famously not bothering to publish any serious policy proposals at all. (Check the party’s website now for anything remotely comparable to B’Yachad’s analysis of the education crisis, and recommendations to fix it. You won’t find it.)

And even if you remain cynical, B’Yachad’s plans represent something that has been conspicuously absent from much of Israel’s political conversation: a detailed attempt to imagine what the country’s education system should look like in 10 or 20 years. This is a party taking the responsibility of standing for government seriously.

Voters can’t hold a party to a standard it never set for itself, and most of Israel’s political establishment has simply opted out of the conversation altogether. Whatever else divides Israeli voters this election, the state of our children’s education shouldn’t be a niche concern. It’s worth asking every party, not just B’Yachad, where they actually stand — and worth noticing which ones bother to answer.