Last update - 00:00 05/12/2006
Education Ministry reduces cuts to budget for teacher training
By Orr Kashty, Haaretz Correspondent
Education Minister Yuli Tamir announced Tuesday that rather than cut NIS 38 million from teachers' training college budgets, as planned, it would cut NIS 22 million.
However, the education colleges forum said it would continue to fight against the cuts.
"We can't withstand another cut, small or large, to the college's budget, and we will fight to have it canceled," said the forum's chairman, Professor Shlomo Beck.
Some 100 students from different colleges demonstrated against the budget cuts on Tuesday.
Tamir's decision to reduce cuts obliterated the NIS 16 million that was to have been part of a broader education budget cut.
In a discussion held by the Knesset's education committee Tuesday, Beck said "the Education Minister's decision is an important step, but not enough. We embarked on this struggle not in order to reach a compromise, but in order to cancel the cut completely. We can't withstand another cut, regardless of its size. Any decision that increases the cut could result in the collapse of the academic colleges. "
Chairman of Levinsky College, Professor Miriam Mevorach, said, "we have canceled the programs in Geography, History, Judaism, and Communications, and I have fired 150 out of 500 staff members. I blame myself for keeping silent for too long. We behaved with academic restraint and in retrospect that was a mistake, because now we are in danger of shutting down."
Labor MK Michael Melchior, chairman of the Knesset education committee, said that "we have succeeded in reducing the cut to NIS 22 million, now we must act to ment that damage already done."