Since 2001, following petitions filed by hundreds of parents and a number of NGOs including Ir Amim, there have been active judicial proceedings concerning the grave shortage of classrooms for Palestinian children in East Jerusalem. Over the course of the past decade, Ir Amim has maintained consistent monitoring to assess the progress of classroom construction in East Jerusalem. Until 2011, monitoring has been conducted in parallel to petitions filed by Ir Amim; since the High Court of Justice ruling in February 2011 (HCJ 5317/08; HCJ 3843,5185/01) the organization has issued annual education reports.
In February 2011 the Supreme Court accepted a petition by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), ruling that the tremendous shortage of classrooms in the official school system in East Jerusalem constitutes a violation of the constitutional right to education for the children of East Jerusalem. The Court demanded that the Jerusalem Municipality and the Ministry of Education establish the necessary infrastructure within five years, by 2016, to absorb all East Jerusalem children whose families elect to enroll them in the official school system. The Court also ruled that in order to realize the Compulsory Education Law, the State must underwrite the tuition of any student who is unable to secure a place in the official education system and who is consequently forced to enroll in one of the recognized but unofficial schools operating in East Jerusalem. The term “recognized but unofficial’ refers to those schools that are licensed and funded by the Ministry of Education but are privately operated and charge tuition.[1]
In previous reports, written together with ACRI, Ir Amim presented current data on classroom construction and other evidence of deep discrimination against East Jerusalem students, including figures on dramatically increasing dropout rates, the shortage of professional staffing positions (guidance counselors, drop-out counselors, etc.), disparities in administrative budgets and intervention in curricula. Ir Amim annually presents this data to the Jerusalem Municipality, the Ministry of Education and the Knesset Education Committee.
In light of the gap—which is narrowing but at an insufficient pace—and in view of the Supreme Court’s February 2016 deadline to close it, this year Ir Amim’s monitoring focuses on the number of East Jerusalem classrooms still to be allocated and analysis of the progress of construction in the last 13 years since the issue was first brought before the Court. Regrettably, despite its recognition of the severe shortage and despite the commitment of professionals in the Jerusalem Municipality, the pace of classroom construction is not keeping up with population growth and, as a result, the number of required classrooms is actually growing each year.
A summary of this year's monitoring data indicates:
- At least 8,100 East Jerusalem children are not presently enrolled in any known educational institution.
- A total of 3,055 classrooms is required to close the gap: 408 school classrooms, 330 kindergarten classrooms, 681 classrooms to replace existing substandard ones and another 1,636 classrooms needed for children attending unofficial schools due to insufficient slots in the public school system.
- In September 2014, 57 new classrooms are expected to open. Another 69 classrooms will be rented.
- From 2001 until the opening of the upcoming school year, the Municipality will have built a total of 438 classrooms, which amounts to a bare 14% of the number required to close the existing gap.
The dearth of classrooms is the crux of the educational crisis in East Jerusalem. High dropout rates and gaps in standard professional positions in schools may well be problematic in and of themselves, but these factors are undoubtedly related to the classroom shortage. It is hard to imagine a similar situation of children not having a proper physical place to study anywhere else under Israeli jurisdiction. The forecast is a grave one as we approach the five-year deadline the Supreme Court set for the Ministry 3 of Education and the Jerusalem Municipality to solve the shortage in the number of classrooms. The implications of this dire situation are intolerable for the thousands of children for whom there is no school to attend—certainly not near their homes—or whose parents are forced to pay thousands of shekels for unofficial or private schools, often of inferior quality compared to official state schools.
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[1] HCJ 5373/08 Abu Libdeh v. Minister of Education (given on February 6, 2011).
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