Education ministry to locate retired teachers and students to enable split of early grade classes

Education Minister Yoav Galant today unveiled the ministry's continuation of plans to open the school year on September 1, under Corona restrictions.
According to the plan being formulated by the Ministry of Education, studies in kindergartens and grades 1-4 will in any case take place in classes of up to 18 students per class - so that existing classes in elementary schools will be split into two. In kindergartens the classroom split will be more complex, and will require different solutions like installing a partition inside the kindergarten to create separation between the groups and purchasing chemical toilets to be placed in the kindergarten yards. In addition, since the size of a kindergarten class according to the standard of the Ministry of Education is 55 square meters, there is a difficulty in splitting the class into two while maintaining a sufficient distance between the kindergarten students.
The rest of the education system students, in grades 5-12, will begin the school year with distance learning until further notice, but the distance learning program, which failed during the first shutdown period, has not yet been presented. Galant said he strives to reach a point where every student in grades 5-12 will be able to get to school and meet his or her classmates and educator at least once a week.
The biggest difficulty will be finding and recruiting tens of thousands of teachers, kindergarten teachers and assistants who can execute the program - and be responsible for the new classrooms in the schools, and for the groups in the kindergartens.
The education system has about 20,000 kindergartens for ages 6-3, in each of which one teacher is employed and at least one assistant. According to the plan, one teacher will be responsible for the two groups of students in each kindergarten, but for that the ministry will be required to almost double the number of assistants working in the kindergartens.
In elementary schools, which currently employ about 90,000 teachers, the state will be required to employ tens of thousands of people who will serve as assistants or new teachers and supervise students in groups that will be split.
Today the education system is facing a severe shortage of professional and quality teachers. The meaning of the program is the rapid recruitment of tens of thousands of people without proper training or experience in educating and caring for children, so that they can be employed in schools. In recent months, the Ministry of Education has presented a plan to convert about 300 unemployed people with an academic degree in teaching over the course of a few months, but it has been severely criticized by teachers and principals.
To do so, Galant said the ministry of Education would locate retirees and students - with priority for teaching students, female teachers, and the unemployed who have an academic degree, or other training suitable for work in schools. Galant said that in addition, the ministry would be forced to simplify procedures to expedite the recruitment of personnel and the purchase of the necessary equipment for kindergartens and schools.

In doing so, Galant abandoned the plan he introduced last week that kindergarten education would take place in middle and high schools, presumably due to its high cost. However, Galant noted that some local authorities will be allowed to do so, and according to additional solutions they see fit.