A team of Arab educators warned Sunday — a day before the beginning of the new school year — that the situation in the Arab educational system in Israel has reached a new low.
At a Tel Aviv press conference, the educators said an Arab child is two years behind a Jewish child of the same age in reading comprehension. The speakers said this was the result of a persistent gap in infrastructure, school classes, teachers and books.
Thousands of teachers would be needed to upgrade the level of education of Arab children to that of Jewish pupils, said Majed el-Hajj, a sociology professor at Haifa University and the head of an educational committee set up by the National Committee of Arab Municipalities.
Only 60 percent of Arab pupils complete elementary school, and only 50 percent graduate high school, the educators said.
The speakers also proposed that the Arab school system devote more time and space for issues of the Arab-Israeli conflict. “It is better that the Arab student hear about those issues at school than elsewhere,” they said.
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