Teachers Union: Stop Placing Students With Individual Support in Regular Classes

Education Minister Yoav Kisch on the Home Front Command guidelines for the coming days / Ministry of Education spokesperson

In a sharp letter sent yesterday, Tuesday, by Teachers Union Secretary-General Yaffa Ben David to the director general of the Education Ministry, and published on the Shavim website, Ben David claims that the ministry promised the union, under law, that no more than two integrated students, students with an individual support package in regular classes, would be placed in a regular classroom. Ben David warns that if the demand is not met, the organization will take labor action, up to and including shutting down the education system. According to the Education Ministry, their number currently stands at 234,000.

According to the Teachers Union, ahead of the 5787 school year, many integrated students are being placed in schools and kindergartens, sometimes even seven or more, compared with a special education class standard of only 7. "An absurd reality is being created." Yaffa Ben David / Reuven Castro

Ben David wrote further that, in her view, an absurd reality is being created, in which a regular class with about 30 general education students also includes special education students, while the teaching staff, even if not trained in special education, is dealing with a regular class and a special education class in the same room. "It is plainly unreasonable, creates an unbearable burden on the educational teams, and in practice prevents learning both for students with an individual support package and for the other students."

This time, however, the Teachers Union is not settling for a warning. At the end of the letter, Ben David makes clear that, according to her, they will not allow more than two students to be placed in a regular class, and if the Education Ministry does not act to correct the situation as it wants, the organization will, she says, use legal and organizational measures, including declaring a labor dispute with all that entails. The move amounts to a real threat of a strike in the education system, ahead of the opening of the next school year.

The questionnaire that will help you sort it out, which party best matches your views