While Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett continue efforts to bring 30,000 chareidim into the workforce and compel chareidi schools in include secular subjects, the CBS shows interesting numbers for the nation’s school system. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in five years, 2019, 56.6% of new students entering the school system will be chareidi or Arab. That means these two populations will compromise a majority of the nation’s school system, which is why the two ministers feel it is critical to bring subjects such as mathematics, English and science into their curriculums.

The CBS report adds that of the 182,000 students entering the school system from 2013-2019, forty thousand (40,000) will be from the Arab sector (a 10% increase) and 63,000 from the chareidi sector.

The CBS reports that in 2019 only 40.7% of the nation’s students will be enrolled in a non-religious public school while 26.2% will be in an Arab sector school, 18.8% in a chareidi school and 14.3% in a religious public school. In the coming six years, only 79,000 new students will enter the state public schools, compromising a mere 43.4% of all of the new students entering schools nationwide. The total number of students is expected to reach a record-breaking 1.744 million as compared to 1.565 million in 2012, an 11.7% increase.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)