Peres gets results
צילום: לע"מ
Arab sector cancels school strike
Mediated by President Shimon Peres, negotiations between Arab sector representatives and Education Ministry reach agreement: NIS 100 million added to Arab sector school budgets
Following suit with the Middle and High School Teachers Association and the Sderot Teachers Committee, the Arab sector has also cancelled threats to strike on the first day of school.
Negotiations between the Education Ministry and Interior Ministry supervised by President Shimon Peres ended successfully, and thus 460,000 Arab students will start school as planned this Sunday.
The budget for Arab sector schools will get an additional NIS 100 million, it was agreed. In addition, 40 thousand school hours will be added, totaling NIS 21.9 million, and four new committees to examine education in the Arab sector will be established. The committees will examine the state of pupils' academic achievement, educational content, development and learning disabilities.
The committees will start work in October and will be demanded to present their conclusions in three months time.
Raja Zaatara, a member of the Arab educational affairs monitoring committee, welcomed the agreements.
"Since Education Minister Yuli Tamir assumed her position, they've tried to ignore our demands. Now, thanks to President Peres' mediation, we've made some achievements. For some reason people assumed that if the education minister was left-wing, then our demands would be met with less of a struggle and there would be more attention paid to problems in the Arab sector, but that didn't happen. Now we feel that we're starting to reach significant achievements."
In recent weeks intensive negotiations were held between representatives of the Education Ministry, the Arab sector, representatives of local authorities, and the director generals of the Interior and Education Ministries regarding the demands. Representatives of the Arab sector charged that school infrastructure was poor and there was a severe lack of classrooms, as well as budgetary funds to improve the education system.
The representatives further noted about the great disparity between the Jewish and Arab sectors regarding pupils' achievements on matriculation exams.
