Which of Israel's sectors has the highest growth in education?

A decade ago, in 2010, the number of children in schools in Israel was 1.51 million, which means that the number has since increased by 24%, or an average of 2% per year. The education system is divided into sectors and not every sector grows at the same rate. Since 2010, the fastest growing educational sector has been ultra-Orthodox education, which is currently the second largest sector (after state education), and currently has 359,200 students in Israel. 

Haredi education has been growing since 2010 at an average rate of 3.6% per year. It is interesting that in the previous decade (2000-2010), ultra-Orthodox education did not have the highest growth, since Bedouin education then grew at an average rate of 5.7% per year, compared to 4.7% in the ultra-Orthodox sector. In the current decade, since 2010, state-religious education, education in the Bedouin sector, and state education in the Jewish sector have grown at a similar rate, by 2.3%, 2.1%, and 1.9% per year, respectively.

State education in the Jewish sector is the largest group, numbering 809,600 students. It is interesting to see that in contrast to state-religious education and state education in the Jewish sector, the percentage increase in the ultra-Orthodox sector, although high, is declining.A low percentage of growth was recorded in education in the Arab and Druze sectors. Both had a sharp decline in the growth rate from the previous decade, and in the Druze sector there was even a decline in the number of students.

Between the two decades, the previous and the present, the only two sectors in which the growth rate was on the rise, were the state and the state-religious sector. In Jerusalem, the picture is different. The average annual growth rate in 2010-2020 was 3.9% in Arab education – it seems that Jerusalem has not yet reached the low growth rate of this sector in Israel; in the ultra-Orthodox sector, the average annual growth rate was 2.4%, also significantly less than in Israel; in state-religious education in Jerusalem, the annual increase was 2.2%, similar to Israel; and in state education in the Jewish sector, there was no increase, unlike the situation in Israel.

YAIR ASSAF-SHAPIRA