The Ministries of Finance and Education are launching a plan to implement Liba studies in the Haredi sector: the plan includes training thousands of teachers for Liba studies, establishing frameworks that will be implemented in small yeshivots, where they will study a full matriculation exam, and increasing enforcement. The total cost of the plan is approximately 150 million shekels.
The plan, the details of which are revealed in the newspaper Israel Hayom, is being implemented by Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Education Minister Shai Piron, and its main purpose is to regulate the educational activities of Haredi educational institutions in the education system, including regulation by the Ministry of Education of institutions in the sector, imparting basic skills within the framework of the Liba subjects, training teachers for Liba studies, and providing incentives for establishing high schools that will integrate matriculation studies.
To implement this reform, the Ministry of Education is working to complete the establishment of a new district within the ministry - the Haredi District - which will centralize supervision of the Haredi education systems.
The district is expected, among other things, to recruit a large-scale workforce for supervision, control and management. For example, this district will be assigned an additional 65 supervision standards, as well as another 30 new control and administration standards. Staffing the standards will be done in three "phases", the first of which will be implemented at the beginning of May and within the framework of which the ministry will recruit 40 supervisors and 25 control and administration employees.
Within the framework of the new standards, control and supervision over the existence of proper administration, prevention of discrimination, implementation of LIBA studies and, if necessary, also budgetary offsets from institutions that will not teach LIBA.
Teacher training for the subjects of the LIBA
According to the report in Israel Hayom, a central part of the strategic plan is, as stated, training teachers for boys' educational institutions in the sector for the purpose of assimilating the LIBA subjects. This involves training 6,000 teachers within five years, and as early as the next school year (5775), the training of 1,075 teachers for this purpose will begin.
The budgetary cost allocated for this will be approximately 50 million shekels: approximately 10 million shekels will be allocated in the current school year (2014) and another approximately 40 million shekels will be allocated in the next school year. In total, approximately 100 million shekels will be allocated in the coming years.
This program is needed because most of the teachers currently teaching in ultra-Orthodox institutions for boys have not been trained to teach the subjects of LIBA. Moreover, the curricula in the ultra-Orthodox sector for boys are not sufficiently adapted to LIBA studies, so that LIBA requirements require their redefinition and even the development of new textbooks.
Another step included in the plan is providing incentives for the establishment of Haredi high school frameworks that combine matriculation studies alongside religious studies. These frameworks will be alternatives to small yeshivahs, where secular studies are not taught at all.
In addition, Education Minister Shai Piron has taken a series of steps to strengthen regulation of the Haredi sector. For example, 18 institutions belonging to Haredi education recently joined the Haredi public education network.
Join the Haredim 10 Facebook page >>
Join the X page of Haredim 10 >>
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
