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Bennett’s government advances ultra-Orthodox public school system

The new Israeli government focuses efforts on pushing forward and expanding an ultra-Orthodox public school system.
A religious Jewish yeshiva (seminary) student stands outside the local army draft office May 11, 2006 at Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv in central Israel.

The issue of the integration of the ultra-Orthodox into Israeli society, economically and socially, is one of the most important Israel faces domestically. One of the biggest obstacles to doing so is the independent and separate school systems of most of the ultra-Orthodox streams, from Shas to the Lithuanians to the Hasidim, where every Hasidic sect has its own educational institutions. The solution devised in 2014 by then-Education Minister Shai Piron of establishing an ultra-Orthodox public school system has gotten a big push in the new government — also in light of growing demand for it among the ultra-Orthodox.

For decades, the state has fought to bring curricula into the ultra-Orthodox schools that could help young ultra-Orthodox integrate into the job market, with “core subjects” such as English, mathematics and especially science, but without success.

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