Test results show children of immigrants from former Soviet Union outscore native-born Israelis

Children of parents from Commonwealth of Independent States outscored the children of native-born Israelis in math, science and English by 30, 20 and 40 points respectively.

The children of parents from the Commonwealth of Independent States outperformed the children of native-born Israelis by around 30 points in math, 20 points in science and 40 points in English on the national Meitzav achievement tests, when the scores are analyzed according to socioeconomic background.

The children of immigrants from the CIS perform comparably with their classmates with sabra parents on the tests in mathematics and in science and technology administered in the fifth and eighth grades, and even outscore their Israeli peers by an average of 15 to 20 points on the English-language portion of the exams. But on the Hebrew-language part of the test they score an average of 20 to 30 points lower than children whose parents were born in Israel. But this gap narrows after adjustments are made for socioeconomic differences, especially among students from the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.