Last update - 00:00 07/12/2007
Arab education panel sets up extra-ministerial oversight body
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
The Arab monitoring committee on education, made up of education-department heads at local authorities, has announced the formation of an independent pedagogic secretariat that will guide the Arab school system outside the Education Ministry's authority.
Officials on the monitoring committee, which will set up the new body, termed the decision "a step on the way to self-managing Arab educational affairs," in the spirit of the document entitled "the future vision of Palestinian Arabs in Israel," released a year ago.
The timing of the announcement was determined following publication of the results in last year's standardized tests in core subjects, in which Arab schools scored especially low compared to Jewish schools. Haaretz has learned that the pedagogic secretariat's objective will be "to design a strategic education program and to formulate a general policy for Arab education."
The founding document states that this entity will operate from a point of "equality" with the Education Ministry's general pedagogic secretariat. Dr. Iman Agabriya, who is to head the new body, emphasized it would set its own agenda.