Education in Israel

The education system in Israel consists of three tiers: primary education (grades 1–6, approximately ages 6–12), middle school (grades 7–9, approximately ages 12–15) and high school (grades 10–12, approximately ages 15–19). Compulsory education takes place from kindergarten through 10th grade. The school year begins on September 1 (September 2 if September 1 is on Saturday), ending for elementary school pupils on June 30 (June 29 if June 30 is on Saturday), and for middle school and high school pupils on June 20 (June 19 if June 20 is on Saturday). Haredi Yeshivas follow an independent schedule, starting on 1 Elul. Israeli culture views higher education as the key to higher mobility and socioeconomic status in Israeli society. For millennia medieval European antisemitism often forbade the Jews from owning land and farming, which limited their career choices for making a decent living. This forced many Jews to place a much higher premium on education allowing them to seek alternative career options that involved entrepreneurial and white-collar professional pursuits such as merchant trading, science, medicine, law, accountancy, and moneylending as these professions required higher levels of verbal, mathematical, and scientific literacy. The emphasis of education within Israeli society has its modern roots at least since the Jewish diaspora from the Renaissance and Enlightenment Movement all the way to the roots of Zionism in the 1880s. Jewish communities in the Levant were the first to introduce compulsory education for which the organized community, not less than the parents, was responsible for the education of the next generation. With contemporary Jewish culture's strong emphasis, promotion of scholarship and learning and the strong propensity to promote cultivation of intellectual pursuits as well as the nation's high university educational attainment rate exemplifies how highly Israeli society values higher education. Israel's populace is well educated and Israeli society highly values education.