Extra funding for Jerusalem schools to switch from Palestinian curriculum

Israel’s Education Ministry has decided to increase the budget of Jerusalem schools which teach the Israeli syllabus, Quds Press reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz saying on Friday.

Currently, most East Jerusalem schools teach the Palestinian curriculum.

The extra funding will not be available to schools which continue teaching the Palestinian curriculum. Yet according to senior ministry officials, the money is coming from a general budget that is supposed to serve all East Jerusalem students.

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“After many years of discriminating against education in East Jerusalem, the Education Ministry is now demanding that schools adopt Israeli curricula as a condition for obtaining resources,” said one person familiar with the plan to Haaretz.“That’s educationally, politically and morally unacceptable.”

According to Haaretz, the plan will offer extra classroom hours to any school that adopts the Israeli curriculum in whole or in part. These schools will thus receive more teaching hours than schools teaching the Palestinian curriculum, but not necessarily as many as schools in the regular Israeli school system receive.

Schools that use the Israeli curriculum will also receive extra hours of counselling, music and art classes, teachers’ education and more.

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