Occupied Jerusalem The school year in Jerusalem does not start on a uniform date for all students, who number about 100,000 and receive their education at all levels, from kindergarten to high school.
While education begins today, Monday, in private schools, those affiliated with the occupation municipality, and what are known as “contractor” schools, about 45,000 Jerusalemite students will head to the public endowment schools affiliated with the Palestinian Authority on September 9, according to what was announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.
In addition to the many challenges facing the education sector in Jerusalem, the new academic year (2024-2025) begins with additional obstacles resulting from the war that broke out on October 7, 2023, most notably the shift in schools affiliated with the Palestinian Waqf to distance learning due to the difficulty of access on the one hand, and the fluctuation of salaries on the other hand.
Impact of closures
Abdul Qader al-Husseini, chairman of the Faisal al-Husseini Foundation, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that 40% of teachers working in Palestinian public and private schools in Jerusalem come from the West Bank. Due to the road closures and disruptions that accompanied the war, many of them were unable to reach their work.
In addition to this – according to Al-Husseini – is the problem of the Palestinian Authority’s salaries and their irregularity, which led to the fluctuation of the face-to-face education system, which in turn led during the 2023-2024 academic year to the migration of 750 male and female students from public endowment schools to schools that fall under the umbrella of Israeli education.
This also prompted 150 male and female teachers to resign or request unpaid leave and move to Israeli Maaref schools, where salaries are regular and their monthly value is much higher than what a teacher receives in Palestinian schools.
“The families were forced to look for schools where education is regular, and we expect the same problem to continue and worsen during the 2024-2025 academic year,” Al-Hussaini added.
School bleeding
While what Al-Husseini called the “bleeding of Palestinian schools” continues, the Israelis are proceeding with their plans to either include the Israeli “Bagrut” education system within schools, or to completely transform education in some schools from the “Tawjihi” (Palestinian high school) system to the “Israeli Bagrut.”
The schools in which Jerusalem students learn the Palestinian curriculum are not immune from attacks on their curricula, starting with the deletion of some subjects and national symbols, and continuing with the addition of subjects in place of the deleted ones. The next fear is that they will be changed so that the Tawjihi student in Jerusalem will not be qualified to take the general secondary school exams.
Although the occupation municipality is working to build new schools in Jerusalem that teach the general Israeli curriculum or schools specializing in science and technology, the capacity of these schools is limited, according to Abdul Qader Al-Husseini, whose organization conducts studies on the education sector in the occupied city.
According to Al-Husseini, 2,000 new students join Jerusalem schools every year, and there is a need every year for 80 classrooms. Israel provides, at best, only 36 of them, and the shortage in the number of classrooms in Jerusalem now amounts to 10,000 seats.
As the new school year approaches, the education sector in occupied Jerusalem suffers from a shortage of classrooms due to the neglect of the Israeli Ministry of Education and the occupation municipality in the city of schools that teach the Palestinian curriculum, and it also obstructs any attempt to build new schools and classrooms.
According to the Faisal Al-Husseini Foundation, which specializes in… pic.twitter.com/sqpnwlTeAM
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Jerusalemite students graduate from schools that teach the Israeli curriculum with low educational quality. This is due, according to the Faisal Husseini Foundation, to the huge budget gap compared to Jewish schools, which has a direct impact on the quality of education.
Hence, the student graduates from these schools without being able to enter university with scientific specializations, and is encouraged to enroll in literary courses in Israeli universities that Israelis do not go to, “so our students are the customers for these specializations, or they enter the Israeli labor market in jobs that Israelis do not work in and are at the bottom of the economic structure, and this affects Jerusalem in general, so that the city remains at the bottom of the economic and social ladder.”
Al-Husseini continues his talk by saying that the number of schools that fall under the umbrella of Palestinian education in Jerusalem is 139 schools, 50 of which are affiliated with the Jerusalem Education Directorate, and the rest fall under the umbrella of private schools, and the percentage of Jerusalemite students who learn the Israeli curriculum is 18%.
The current war conditions make it difficult for institutions concerned with the education sector to operate, including the Faisal Husseini Foundation, whose chairman said that some institutions will enter into a state of struggle for survival, and that his foundation, despite all the dire circumstances, will continue to focus on the quality of education in Palestinian schools in Jerusalem through intensive training for teachers on the one hand, and supporting the infrastructure in schools on the other hand.
“We focus on renewing furniture, taking care of electrical networks to maintain safety, working on renewing laboratories to raise the level of science education and transforming experiments into scientific research, and working in the field of developing technology and artificial intelligence in schools to be attractive to students, but financing is always the most difficult obstacle we face,” Al-Hussaini adds.
Fighting the Israelization of education
In turn, the head of the Jerusalem Schools Parents’ Committees Union, Ziad al-Shamali, told Tel Aviv Tribune Net that the union and the schools will face – as every year – the dilemma of distributing the undistorted Palestinian curriculum books to Jerusalem school students, but this year this step will be difficult – if not impossible – in light of the state of emergency that has been declared since the beginning of the war.
Al-Shamali continues, “The move will be very difficult. Before the war, several people were arrested while transporting books from warehouses to schools to distribute them to students. A few days ago, an official letter arrived from the Arabic Education Department in the occupation municipality stating that the distribution of Palestinian curriculum books is prohibited except through the municipality for the 2024-2025 academic year.”
The letter, a copy of which was sent to the directors and departments of Arab education and school inspectors in Jerusalem on August 29, stated that what is distributed by the municipality must be adhered to, and that the supervision will be very strict by the Audit and Control Department in the Israeli Ministry of Education.
According to the book, the municipality will distribute distorted books for the first time this year to the 11th and 12th grades (Tawjihi), and this puts Jerusalemite high school students in front of a dilemma in obtaining sufficient content to take the unified exams with the West Bank and Gaza Strip.