Choosing a school for your child in Israel
Updated
Once you have chosen the system, general public, religious public, or recognized but unofficial, the real difficulty is still ahead. You have to choose between two or three schools in the same town and the same system. On paper they look alike. In practice they will give your child a very different education.
There is no single right answer. But some questions really tell schools apart, and many others tell you nothing. Here are the first kind.
1. How many olim does the school take in?
This is the question that best predicts the first year, and almost nobody asks it.
A school that takes in many olim usually has its own in-school ulpan, a named staff member in charge of them, teachers who are used to a child who understands but cannot yet answer, and classmates who have been through the same thing. A school that takes in three gets a few hours of Hebrew a week and, often, nothing else. That is not bad will: nothing more has ever needed to exist there.
The effect works in two ways, and people underestimate the second. In the first school, your child is an ordinary student whose Hebrew is improving. In the second, your child is the only one who does not understand.
The exact question to ask: "How many olim students does the school have this year, and for how many years has it had them?"
2. Is there an ulpan inside the school, or do you have to find one outside?
An in-school ulpan means your child learns Hebrew during school hours, in the building, with no extra travel and no extra fatigue. An outside ulpan usually means lessons at the end of the day, after a full day of not understanding everything.
Both work. They do not cost your child the same thing.
3. Up to what level does the school teach math and English?
This question has the most distant effect and the hardest one to undo, and that is why you must ask it early. Ask it even for an elementary school, if that school belongs to a group that feeds into the same high school.
A high school that does not offer math at 5 יחידות (units, the highest level) closes, from kita ט (ninth grade, Year 10 in the UK), university paths your child does not yet know they will want. And because the science מגמות (majors) require a high level of math, this one question decides several others.
Ask also what share of students actually finish with 5 units. "We offer 5 units" and "a third of our students get them" do not describe the same school.
4. Which מגמות does the high school offer?
A major is a promise the school makes, not an option the ministry guarantees. Each high school opens its own majors, based on the teachers it has. A computer science or physics major depends on one teacher, and it can disappear when that teacher leaves.
If your child already speaks French at home, it is worth asking whether the school offers French as a major. That is five units your child already has, and the one high school subject where they will arrive ahead instead of behind.
5. What time does the school day end?
A down-to-earth question with real effects. The length of the day varies a lot from one school to another, and especially between an ordinary school and a school with a stronger religious program, which adds hours of קודש (Jewish studies).
A long day is neither good nor bad in itself. It becomes a problem when you add it to an outside ulpan, to homework in a language your child does not yet master, and to the fatigue of a recent move to a new country. Do the sum before you choose, not after.
6. Who will answer when something goes wrong?
Ask for the name of a person. Not a job title, a name.
In most schools, the real contact is the מחנך, the homeroom teacher, or else the יועץ, the school counselor. Knowing which of the two follows olim students, and whether they speak a language you understand, completely changes how much you can do in the first year.
A school that cannot give you that name has just answered you.
7. What do olim parents who are already there say?
With one important caveat: they will mostly tell you whether their child was happy there, and that depends on their child as much as on the school.
What they really know, and what the school will not tell you, is how steady things are. A support program for olim that has run for six years and a program announced for the next school year are not worth the same.
What does not tell schools apart
Three criteria take up a lot of room in conversations and predict little.
General reputation. It often reflects the neighborhood more than the teaching.
The building. It says nothing about the level, and for an oleh child it says nothing at all.
Distance, within limits. Twenty extra minutes of travel weigh less than a year with no support program. Past a certain travel time, the balance tips the other way, but it tips later than most people think.
The order of the steps
Decide the school's legal status and its system first: they rule out most of the candidates. The seven questions above choose between the schools that remain.
If the difference between general public, religious public, and recognized but unofficial schools is not clear, it is explained here: the Israeli school system, explained for olim parents.
Finally, the most useful contact, and the one parents call least, is the מנהל אגף החינוך, the head of your municipality's education department. That office knows what each school in town really offers, knows which ones take in olim, and has nothing to sell you.