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My child is struggling with math in Hebrew

Updated

The story is almost always the same. A child who had good math grades before aliyah brings home, a few months later, a test marked 50 out of 100. The child says, "I knew how to do it." And most of the time, that is true.

This guide explains why, how long it lasts, what the school must do, and what a parent can do at home, even without reading a word of Hebrew.

What the grade really measures

The Ministry of Education commissioned a national study of olim students' results from Tel Aviv University, led by Tamar Levin, Elana Shohamy and Bernard Spolsky. The tests took place in 2000-2001, with 2,844 students in kita ה, kita ט and kita י״א (fifth, ninth and eleventh grade in the US; Years 6, 10 and 12 in the UK), comparing olim with Israeli-born students.

In math, the result is clear for olim from the former Soviet Union. They were markedly weaker than Israeli-born students on three points: the vocabulary of math concepts, understanding the text of a word problem, and explaining how they reached an answer. In arithmetic, on the other hand, their level was relatively high.

A second measurement confirms it. In kita י״א, the same math exam, given in a bilingual version, in Hebrew and in Russian, produced markedly better results than the Hebrew-only version, for students who had lived in Israel for the same length of time.

In other words: part of an oleh child's math grade measures their Hebrew. It is not the only factor: the study names the family's socioeconomic level as the leading factor in olim students' results. But when the arithmetic is right, it is often the question that does not get through.

How long catching up takes

Longer than families are usually told.

The same study measured how many years olim need to reach the level of Israeli-born students. In math: five to seven years, nine years or eleven years, depending on the grade. In academic Hebrew (reading a textbook, writing an answer): five to seven years, eight years or eleven years.

Three cautions when you read these figures.

The data is old, and it covers children who came from the former Soviet Union and from Ethiopia, not the families who arrive today. Even so, the study calls itself distinctive, because it tested the students themselves instead of asking their teachers, and the ministry's Hebrew inspectorate was still citing it in 2020: learning the language takes "between five and eleven years".

The study did not measure playground Hebrew. A child can chat with classmates after a few months and still be far from the Hebrew of a word problem. The first reassures parents. The second decides the grade.

The delay is not destiny. The study itself concludes that these students needed many more hours of support than they were getting. This is our reading, not a finding of the study: the delay describes what happened with the support of that time, not what your child can do.

The Hebrew hours the school must provide

The rules are published by the ministry on its portal for parents. If you know ESL lessons from an American school, or EAL support from a British one, the idea is similar. Here are the rules.

At least six hours a week of Hebrew as a second language (עברית כשפה שנייה) for each oleh student. The ministry allocates these hours to the school according to each student's date of aliyah. The guide from the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration adds that the number also depends on how many olim the school takes in.

Group lessons, and individual lessons when the student is the only oleh in the school.

Fixed slots in the timetable, set according to a תוכנית עבודה אישית (tokhnit avoda ishit), a personal work plan adapted to the child.

A named person in charge: the מחנך (mehanekh), the homeroom teacher, supports the oleh student and follows their progress.

An assessment of the child's Hebrew, and of their ability to follow the other subjects, with tests called מבדקי הערכה (mivdakei ha'arakha).

And after the basic level, a student who has finished "basic" Hebrew but still has gaps in school subjects can get help through the ministry's programs, or through hours granted by a ועדת חריגים (va'adat harigim), a committee for special cases.

The Ministry of Aliyah's guide names two of these programs, held after school: יע״ל (Ya'al) in elementary school, three two-hour sessions a week, and פל״א (Pele) in middle and high school, nine hours a week. Ask whether they run in your school this year.

How to ask for them

The school receives these hours without any request from you, according to your child's date of aliyah. Check with the school office that the school knows your child is an oleh, and since when. For a תושב חוזר (toshav hozer), a child who returns to Israel after years abroad, the hours are not automatic: ask the school whether it has applied for them. What the hours become in your child's timetable is worth checking too.

  1. Ask the מחנך to see your child's תוכנית עבודה אישית. It is the plan the school must use to set the Hebrew lessons. If nobody can show it to you, that is already an answer.
  2. Ask at what times in the timetable your child has Hebrew as a second language, and, if your child leaves the class for these lessons, which subjects they miss.
  3. Ask for the results of the מבדקי הערכה, and what the school concluded from them for math.
  4. If basic Hebrew is in place but math still lags behind, ask which ministry program the school offers, or whether it can request hours from the ועדת חריגים.
  5. If the school does not answer, contact your municipality's education department, then the ministry's parent support service, whose contact details are on the portal page listed at the end of this guide.

As with all olim rights: use the name of the program. "My child needs help" gets a polite answer. "I am asking to see my child's תוכנית עבודה אישית and their Hebrew-as-a-second-language hours in the timetable" gets a precise one.

Exam accommodations, including for the בגרות (bagrut), the Israeli high school matriculation exams, are a separate subject, and they last much longer than these hours.

What you can do without reading Hebrew

You do not need to read the question to help. You need to know where your child gets stuck.

Go through the test with your child. Ask them to read each question aloud and translate it for you. Correct arithmetic next to word problems left blank is the pattern the study found among olim from the former Soviet Union: the child is stuck on the wording, not on the arithmetic.

Tell the teacher, in those words. "My child calculates correctly but does not understand the question" is not the same message as "my child is weak in math". The difference changes what the school offers.

Work on the concept in the language your child knows best. A fraction is still a fraction. If the concept is clear in English, all that is left is to put a Hebrew word on it. If it is not clear, no vocabulary list will make it clear.

Make a word list for each chapter. At each new chapter, your child picks out the words they do not know in the textbook. You look up their meaning together, with a dictionary or a translation app. Ten words per chapter are often enough: the vocabulary of a math chapter is short, and it comes back again and again.

Teach the instruction words. The verbs that open an exercise are always the same, and a student who does not recognize them does not know what is being asked, even when they know how to do it.

Vocabulary, the obstacle nobody sees

Math vocabulary is short, precise, and impossible to guess. A few words are enough to lose a whole exercise. These come up from elementary school onward:

A child who mixes up מונה and מכנה does not get the fraction wrong: they get the word wrong. And yet it is their fractions grade that drops.

This vocabulary weighs more as the child moves up. The grades of kita ח and kita ט (eighth and ninth grade; Years 9 and 10) decide their math level in kita י (tenth grade; Year 11), and so, indirectly, which מגמות (megamot), the high school tracks, stay open to them: the Israeli school system, explained.

What elev does

elev was built around this problem. The lessons follow the Israeli curriculum, from kita ג (third grade; Year 4) to high school, in Hebrew, because Hebrew is the language your child will be tested in. The vocabulary words are marked: a parent who uses elev in English or in French can click each one and see its translation. What each grade covers is here.

Where to check

The rules on Hebrew hours are published on the Ministry of Education's portal for parents (in Hebrew), with the contact details of the parent support service. At the date of this guide, the page refers to the Director General's circular for the year תשפ״ו (2025-2026). The circular for the current year replaces it when it comes out, and the thresholds change from one year to the next.

Kol Zchut, the nonprofit site on social rights, sums up the same rights in plain Hebrew. Check on the page which circular it is based on.

The Ya'al and Pele programs are described in the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration's guide for olim students (in Hebrew), fifth edition, 2022. Programs change: ask the school whether they still exist.

The summary of the study by Levin, Shohamy and Spolsky (Tel Aviv University, report to the Ministry of Education, 2003) is published by the Ministry of Education. The phrase "between five and eleven years" comes from the Hebrew inspectorate's circular of August 9, 2020.