A new method of budgeting for students at teacher training colleges will provide Arabic speaking students in the north of the country with just over half the budget that Jewish trainee teachers will receive. According to Haaretz, the new program is being implemented by the Education Ministry as a means of encouraging students to study subjects for which there is a lack of teachers, such as mathematics and science. The explanation given by the ministry is that there is an excess of student teachers in the Arabic sector in the north and the goal of the project is to reduce the number of Arabic-speakers doing teacher training in the region.

But in addition to incentivizing students to study subjects for which there is high demand by providing an additional per-student budget, the ministry has decided that the per-student budget for Arabic-speaking trainee teachers in colleges in the north of Israel will be only 56 percent of that received by Jewish students.

“It takes a lot of insensitivity and cold-heartedness to make such a racist and stupid decision,” said Hadash MK Yousef Jabareen (Joint List). “The message is that Arab students in teacher training colleges are labeled as inferior teachers.” Jabareen went on to say “The Arab education system lacks tens of thousands of teaching hours compared to its Jewish counterpart, both for the implementation of differential budgeting [the government’s initiative to focus on enrichment of core subjects in the periphery – Ed.] and to ensure an equal budget in high schools. If the Education Ministry was interested in true equality and would allocate a reasonable amount of teaching hours, thousands of Arab teachers would be absorbed in the system, and there would no longer be a problem of excess teachers.”