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These are exciting results. On the one hand, Arab-Israeli students perform worse in PISA tests than students in six of the seven Arab countries tested. At the same time, families are investing more and more in their children's education. What does this say about the shortcomings of the local education system? First, the problems of Israel's education system are large-scale and extend far beyond the Arab community. Our country as a whole, Israel's average score on the last PISA exam, was generally lower than the entire developed world.
Almost at the very bottom of the list of OECD countries, and that's not even counting the ultra-Orthodox guys who don't study this material and don't pass the exam. So the situation is generally quite bad. The two Jewish movements that are not ultra-Orthodox are inferior to more than 75% of other OECD countries. However, and this is an important "however", our Arabic-speaking children don't even seem to belong to the developed world. Their results are lower than in many third world countries, and, in fact, lower than the results of six of the seven Arab countries that participated in the exam, as you noted.
However, the Arab-Israeli population lives in a developed country, and they want to be part of it. Therefore, if the public education provided to their children is inadequate, more and more parents are spending ever-increasing amounts on their children's education, sending them to private schools, hiring tutors, etc. And we see that in just 10 years, the share of education spending in the total spending of Arab households has increased by 30% They are working on it. They are trying to send their children to universities, and as you mentioned, the data on higher education admissions is improving, although the numbers are still very small. Although the level of academic achievement among Arab
women has increased by almost 500% in just 20 years, it is still lower than that of any Jewish group, particularly among Jewish women. Well, Professor, one can only hope that the new government, whatever it may be, can make this a priority in the coming weeks, months, and years. Professor, overall, if you look at all the schools in the country, considering the COVID lockdowns, 3 years of war, distance learning, and all the disruptions to the educational process, what is your sense of the impact on this young generation?
Has there been a significant academic setback in the last 7 years? Your thoughts. Obviously, yes. Although this is quite difficult to understand, because after COVID, PISA results fell in almost the entire developed world. In our case, they fell much more sharply. In other words, our situation, which was not the best even before COVID, has now become much worse than it was before. And in the case of Arab children in Israel, Arabic-speaking children in Israel, this has serious consequences. So, we are in a certain process right now. We have had many institutional failures across the country in dealing with the post-COVID crises, and now is an opportunity to come together and turn things around. And this means involving almost all
segments of society who want to be part of it. And this is our responsibility. We cannot lose this opportunity. Our productivity in Israel today is one of the lowest among OECD countries. However, we have one small sector- high technology-that keeps us among the developed countries of the world. This is only 10% of the workforce. Their productivity is 22 % higher than the OECD average. Yes. They are responsible for half of all Israeli exports, while having only 10%. In the rest of Israel, productivity is a quarter below OECD levels. So this doesn't just apply to Arab citizens of Israel. We have a problem here that we need to deal with. The
Arabic-speaking residents of Israel, Arab Israelis, bear the brunt of most of these problems, but they are not alone. This is an issue that needs to be addressed nationally and immediately. There is no doubt about that. This should become a priority. Professor Dana Ben- David, thank you very much for your time and your thoughts. Thank you very much for being with us on The Rundown.
