New Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s decision to place his “Revolution in Math Education” high on the list of his ministry’s priorities signals more than just a professional agenda. It is also an indicator of his political ambitions.
As someone focused on targets and measurable objectives, Bennett decided to draw the public’s attention to two major educational reforms right before the start of the school year Sept. 1, using a well-covered news conference as his platform. The first is his “Sardine Reform” (referring to protests by parents against crowded classes where children were squeezed ''like sardines in a can''), reducing class size for first-graders from 40 students to 34. He did this in response to nationwide protests by parents about overcrowding in schools. The second was his revolution in the way math is taught. It has won extensive media support since it was announced Aug. 30.
Almost immediately upon entering the ministry, Bennett — the chairman of HaBayit HaYehudi — identified one of the most pressing problems facing Israel’s education system over the past few years. Israeli students have done poorly on the Program for International Student Assessment tests of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 2013, for instance, Israel ranked 40th among 65 countries for student achievements in mathematics and 41st for achievements in the sciences. The State Comptroller’s Report of May 2014 revealed a very worrying picture concerning these subjects. It found that there has been a steady decline in the number of students studying math at the level of four and five points (five is the highest level) for their matriculation examinations. According to the report, this decline is dramatic. In 2006, 12,900 students took advanced mathematics, while in 2013 the number stood at just 9,100. A program to stop this trend, launched in 2009 at a cost of almost 900 million shekels (about $230 million), failed to achieve its objective.
One reason that Bennett picked this issue is because he comes from the high-tech field, where many of the employees specialized in mathematics in high school. Like so many others, he claimed that the dramatic decline in the number of students concentrating on mathematics is a strategic social problem that could eventually have severe implications for Israel’s job market.
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