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Part Three - The Social Program

Education (1/2)

Responsibility of Parents

"The father must teach his son ... Torah ... and a trade"[1]

Zehut advocates providing maximum liberty to citizens to make choices in their lives and to take responsibility for their choices, while minimizing the involvement and interference of the state in civil life as much as possible. This principle also holds regarding the education of our children.

The education system affects our lives and the lives of our children from every possible perspective: from values and culture to the economic, social, national, and political realms.

Zehut believes that the parent, more than any other person or entity, wants the best for his children, and knows what the best interests of his children are – better than a bureaucratic-governmental system.

Zehut believes that restoring responsibility and control over children's education to their parents will greatly improve the level of education compared with the situation today. It will improve their achievements, will allow each parent to educate the child in accordance with the child's abilities and inclinations, and according to the worldview of the parents.

Unknown to most, according to current law, the party responsible for the education of our children is the Education Minister and not we – the parents. Another thing that most do not know is that national spending on education is now 86 billion shekels a year[2] and that this is actually the largest national expenditure when compared to all other budget items. The percentage of Israel's investment in education is high in comparison with other developed countries, but in the PISA tests, Israeli pupils ranked at the bottom quarter of the table summarizing academic results of children from developed countries. Even if we don't include overhead in the calculation of the budget, we are still talking about an enormous budget by any standard. We can provide our children with a much better education if responsibility is restored to the parents.

The Voucher System

The voucher system combines public funding and free competition. Each parent will receive a voucher from the Education Ministry with a monetary value, which he will be able to redeem at any school he likes, thereby financing the studies of his children. Schools will have to attract students by convincing parents that their school in particular offers a quality academic program and excellent teachers. In this system, the Education Ministry will not dictate curricula or management to schools. Instead, it will open the market to competition between schools. The principal will be able to truly run the school, and not be dependent on countless complex systems.

As a result of the competition that will be created between schools and education networks, a wide variety of schools will be created, and the general level will rise, as always happens when a market is opened to competition. The money saved will be available to provide services to students (e.g., for teachers, guest lecturers, school improvements). A similar process occurred in Scandinavia (Sweden, Finland), where this method has been tried.

The voucher method has many advantages. It is part of a broader worldview that advocates reducing the involvement of the state in citizens' lives, while providing maximum freedom for the citizen to make choices and take responsibility.

Zehut recommends enacting a voucher system in parallel with the current public system. Our expectation is that over the years, the higher quality of schools accepting vouchers will cause a growing number of parents to remove their children from the public schools, which will encourage the public system to renew itself and join the voucher system in one form or another.

What is Money Spent on Today?[3]

According to the Ministry of Finance and CBS for 2012 (the latest year during which detailed data on the separation of education expenditures by type and by age groups was published), the total expenditure on education in Israel stood at 78.2 billion shekels, distributed as follows:

To illustrate the idea of vouchers, we will focus on the formal education system, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, which had about 2 million students in 2012. Deducting fixed expenses for building classrooms and other assets, we are left with a "modest" annual budget of no less than 60.4 billion shekels.

And indeed, the continuing costs (excluding buildings) of educating two million Israeli children from age 3 to age 18[4] was 60.4 billion, and the annual current expenditure per student was therefore 29,700 shekels. Dividing the annual amount per student by 12 months gives us a monthly sum of 2,483 shekels per student per month.[5]

How Would a School Look Under the Voucher System?

According to the proposed system, the Education Ministry would still exist, but its powers and mechanisms would be reduced.[6] Almost all the current amount of education expenditure from public funds would be transferred directly to the educational institutions themselves, proportional to the number of students enrolled. Most of this amount will be used for the payment of teachers' salaries, and the rest for continuing expenses (electricity, water, maintenance), central purchase of textbooks, and educational services such as: trips to museums and theaters, providing psychological support to students who need it, development and maintenance of infrastructure, and so on. In other words, the money of the education budget will go directly to the education of students and not to funding mechanisms, as is the case today.

It Already Works in Israel

The voucher system is already in use in Israel today. A number of years ago, maternity wards in Israeli hospitals looked like standard dormitories, or worse. The National Insurance Institute decided to allow expectant mothers to decide where they want to give birth, and to direct the childbirth budget to the selected hospitals (about 13,000 shekels per birth).

In other words, the mother receives a sort of voucher, redeemed at the hospital where she chooses to give birth. As a result, hospitals have begun to compete for expectant mothers, and maternity wards have become "five-star hotels."

The Option of Empowering Education Networks

One of the concerns of opponents of the voucher system is over-hasty construction of innovative schools that are liable to collapse, which would be detrimental to their students and the educational process. This concern is not necessarily well-founded, because parental responsibility and market forces are likely to balance the system well and quickly.

However, in order to give support and stability to the schools, we should consider a model in which education networks will buffer between the state and schools. Instead of the state maintaining an office for every segment of the public based on pressure groups in the government and the Education Ministry, the public will choose (through the schools) the network that is appropriate to its values and which is reliable and useful for them. The network will help with the infrastructure needs of schools, such as purchase and management of equipment, textbooks and curricula, teacher recruitment, along with effective management and payment of wages.

In this model, the Education Ministry will approve networks according to minimum criteria (see the next paragraph on reducing core requirements), and the networks will be responsible for the legality of curricula and proper management of their schools.

Another advantage to developing education networks is strengthening the moral dimension in education. One of the countries that has implemented the voucher system since the 1990s is Sweden. After the system had been working for two decades, there were claims of moral deterioration in the graduates of the voucher schools.[7] It is here that the networks will provide their broad experience and encourage the construction and operation of value-based educational infrastructure in schools.

Vouchers and Networks

In the framework of the networking model, in order to create competitiveness and efficiency in the networks, each school will receive a school voucher (the value determined by the number of students and other criteria) that it will be able to grant to the network of its choice in exchange for the services and sponsorship of that network. A school wishing to work independently will have to fulfill the core criteria, as well as other criteria that a network would otherwise ensure.

[1] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin 29b. The Talmud states the guiding principle of the Jewish approach to education, which holds that the fundamental responsibility for the education of the son, both morally-spiritually and professionally-economically – is the responsibility of the father and the family. The family may, of course, appoint agents to carry out this duty, in the form of teachers and institutions, but the fundamental responsibility for education always remains on the shoulders of the parents.

[2] According to Central Bureau of Statistics, national expenditures on education in 2014 were 86.4 billion shekels.

[3] For details of the calculations, see the appendix "Education Voucher System Data."

[4] Between 2012 and 2014, the number of students increased by 5% and expenditure on education increased by 10.5%, and from then until today, the numbers have risen even more.

[5] Spending per student in grades 7-12, including buildings, in 2014, was 2,985 shekels per month per student, see the calculation in the appendix.

[6] Some will move to education networks, see below.

[7] There is a debate on the subject, and it is quite possible that other factors are responsible for this phenomenon, such as the massive absorption of immigrants without grounding in local morals.

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