Israeli High Court Approves Plan for Haredi Education Funding Tied to Core Subjects

Israel's Supreme Court has approved a plan formulated by Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara and Deputy Attorney General Avital Sompolinsky regarding the release of frozen funds to Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) educational networks. The decision concerns 98 million shekels originally allocated for the previous academic year, which were held under an interim order.

Under the approved framework, educational institutions that do not meet the full requirements for teaching core subjects will receive either a reduced amount of funding or none at all. Justices Yael Vilner, Ofer Groskopf, and Gila Kenfy-Steinholtz ordered the cancellation of the interim order and the release of funds solely according to this plan, as no objections were filed by the involved parties.

The plan stipulates that funds will only be released for the 2025 academic year and exclusively for institutions teaching core subjects at a rate exceeding 75% of the Ministry of Education's guidelines. The remaining funds, which were the subject of petitions by the Yesh Atid party and the Hiddush organization, will be addressed in future proceedings.

For the purpose of evaluation, only five core subjects will be examined: Bible, Hebrew, English, Mathematics, and Science. Institutions must meet the full standard set by the Ministry of Education for recognized, non-official schools, which are obligated to teach 75% of the foundational curriculum. Institutions failing to meet this standard will not receive their proportional share of the frozen funds. If they taught the subjects at a rate between 75% and 100%, a proportional deduction will be applied, ensuring the funding level does not exceed the actual rate of core subject instruction.

Furthermore, funds designated for 31 institutions where the Ministry of Education found that an entire core subject was not taught across all age groups will not be released. The Attorney General emphasized that this is a specific, retrospective arrangement for the 2025 academic year only and does not resolve broader questions concerning the obligation to teach core subjects, teacher training, assessment methods, or supervision of these networks. These issues will be decided in the ongoing petitions.

The petitions, filed by opposition lawmakers and the Hiddush organization, challenged a December 2025 Finance Committee decision to approve budget transfers to Haredi educational networks just before the end of the budget year. Petitioners argued that many institutions within these networks fail to uphold their core curriculum obligations and are inadequately supervised, thus not justifying additional state funding. Of the approximately one billion shekels initially involved in the petitions, most funds had already been transferred before the interim order, partly for salary purposes. The remaining frozen amount was approximately 98 million shekels, which will now be distributed according to the approved plan.