The government has approved the transfer of responsibility for day care to the Ministry of Education

The government has approved the transfer of responsibility for day care (from birth to age three) from the work arm to the Ministry of Education and this will be done in early 2022. Thus the educational envelope of the dormitories will be transferred, including the pedagogy, construction and training of the educational staff employed in day care. The dormitory subsidy will remain with the Ministry of Economy.
For many years, the demand arose to transfer the day care centers to the Ministry of Education, claiming that it was an educational institution and not a babysitter. The ministers in charge of the labor arm thwarted this, as did the Ministry of Education's high financial demands for budget increases. If the decision is indeed implemented at the beginning of 2022, a situation will be created for the first time in the history of Israel in which the Ministry of Education is responsible for the educational continuum from age 0 to higher education.
The move will allocate a very low amount of about NIS 200 million, which will be approved by the government within the framework of the forthcoming state budget. This is in contrast to the demands of former education ministers for a budget of many billions to compare the service provided in day care to that of kindergartens.
The labor arm, which until now was part of the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, is slated to move to the Ministry of Economy. The subsidy budget for day care centers of NIS 1.2 billion will be transferred to the Ministry of Economy with the labor arm and not to the Ministry of Education. The reason for this, as far as is known, is that the Ministry of Economy can consider considerations of encouraging work in the criteria for facilitation in dormitories and the Ministry of Education does not. Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Economy Minister Orna Barbibai plan to cancel the discounts at dormitories for the families of students this coming November.
The Ministry of Education says that as soon as the responsibility for the dormitories is accepted, the ministry will begin to deepen supervision in these frameworks. According to them, the training processes of the education staffs have long since begun with the amendments to the Supervision Law and the Cameras Law. Education Minister Yifat Shasha Bitton undertakes to expand them upon transfer to the Ministry of Education. For the 2022/23 school year, the Minister will formulate, together with the ministry, an orderly work plan of all the educational and operational aspects related to day care centers.