Parental Choice in Israel’s Educational System: Theory vs. Praxis

Privatisation of religious public education in Israel: enhancing parents’ educational goals or fostering segregation?

“…In Israel, major changes in the educational system have taken place since the mid-1980s, transforming it from a state-controlled, overly bureaucratic and almost fully state-financed system into a decentralised system, partly controlled by local authorities and increasingly privately financed (Yonah 2000). The decentralisation of Israeli SRE should therefore be seen as part of a larger trend of the weakening of Israel's central educational administration in recent years.…”

“…In addition, teachers differ in their interpretation, acceptance, and degree of identification with SRE goals. The outcome of this diversity is social segregation and non-equal educational opportunities for students (Yonah 2000).…”

Yaffa: a school of their choice?

“…The literature on school-choice reforms, and on parental choice at large, shows that family-school partnerships do not occur in a neutral terrain *Email: galle@openu.ac.il (Auerbach 2007, 251). Patterns of choice and parental involvement in the schooling of their children and of family-school-community partnership develop in a specific social context (Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler 1997, 9-10), and vary in accordance with, chiefly, class and ethnicity (Auerbach 2007;Epstein 1995;Reay et al 2007;Vincent 2001;Yonah 2000). Particularly, it is argued that 'parent involvement in education has been socially constructed to privilege White, middle-class norms and the expectations of educators' (Auerbach 2007, 252); therefore, it is questionable how and whether parents of lower class or minority background may act similarly or as effectively (Cooper 2005).…”

“…Indeed, the liberty to make a choice has become a cornerstone of neoliberalism (Ong 2006) and perhaps one of its most salient components. Moreover, the idea of choice, whose meaning is entrenched in the context of a complex global/ local relationship (Davies and Bansel 2007, 249;Yonah 2000), is in itself one of the vehicles that carries the neo-liberal political rationality, which involves the 'extending and disseminating market values to all institutions and social action' (Brown 2003, 3).…”

“…8 And yet this was not an exclusive reason for that act, just like the class factor. As we set to determine whether class was a factor, we noticed that, unlike Jewish parents (Yonah 2000) or British ones (Ball and Vincent 1998), Yaffa's community is highly heterogeneous. In fact, our survey reveals that nearly one-half of the fathers are labourers, and about one-half of the families reported to be earning below the average income.…”