Four of the 10 local or regional authorities with the highest percentage of students passing the high school matriculation exam are Druze municipalities. In all of them, the percentage of students qualifying is greater than 90%, with Peqiin at the top of all districts in Israel, even the wealthiest, with 98.7% of students passing the exam. Hurfesh is fourth, with 98.7% qualifying.

In all, there are only about 20 municipalities of the Druze religious minority in Israel, whose students are only 2% of all Israeli students. Most of these towns are at a low socio-economic level, no different from the neighboring Muslim and Christian Arab towns, but they succeed in reaching high academic attainment. The average of Druze students qualifying for matriculation is 80%, compared to a national average of a little less than 70%.

Matriculation is not the only measure that attests to the high educational level of schools in Druze towns. Israel’s Druze students have accomplished higher achievements in the Meiztav exams (measuring “growth and effectiveness measures for schools”) given in 2019, and in most exams, their results were higher than the average among Jewish students.

In addition, in some of the exams, the average for Druze students who live in socio-economically weaker towns was similar or higher than the achievements of Jewish students from wealthier towns. For instance, in the mathematics test for fifth-graders, the Druze students’ marks were higher than the average marks of Jewish students (268 points compared to 253 among Jewish students and 243 among Arab students) and even 10 points higher than the marks of Jewish students from the highest economic level (258).