Who teaches the children?

The hair design class at the girls' high school in Shoafat looks like a beauty parlor in every sense. There are hairdryers and mirrors on every wall. The 270 girls enrolled in grades 9-12 may choose from three major courses of study: Management, preschool childcare or hair design. School principal Jihan Abu al-Hof says at least half of the 60 girls who graduated last year successfully passed matriculation exams.

This is an impressive statistic when one considers that students in this high school, as opposed to most high schools in East Jerusalem, take the Israeli, rather than the Palestinian, exam. But the Israeli education system may certainly not count this among its successes: This "unofficially recognized school" is a hybrid institution that functions without actual supervision by the education system. Thus, if the school does not meet minimal educational standards, education officials are not likely to lose any sleep.

More than 10,000 of the 56,000 children enrolled in all the educational institutions in East Jerusalem attend unofficially recognized schools. The Department of Unofficial Recognized Education in the Education Ministry is responsible for licensing these schools, and the criteria are identical to those required of official state schools. Unofficially recognized schools are funded by the Education Ministry according to the number of enrolled students (up to 85 percent of the tuition per pupil). In practice, what legally differentiates these schools from official institutions is that they are privately established and operated. In addition, the education minister may release them from rules and standards pertaining to curriculum, study conditions and a variety of financial factors.

Unintended result

This unique format was originally created to provide a solution for religious, particularly ultra-Orthodox, schools that sought to maintain a level of independence. Later, non-religious schools in the Jewish sector, like democratic schools, also made use of this framework. But the picture in East Jerusalem is entirely different: There, the education system makes use of the unofficially recognized status as one of a number of tools employed to shake off responsibility for providing adequate educational institutions in the eastern part of the capital.

There are dozens of unofficially recognized preschools and schools in East Jerusalem. Nearly all of them began to operate in the year 2000. The municipality maintains that it permits and encourages private organizations to open such institutions as an additional solution to the severe problem of crowded classrooms in the official municipal system. The municipality restated this policy in High Court deliberations on the issue, and added that while the municipality prefers the official education system, it relies on private institutions only in locations where the municipality lacks adequate solutions. This amalgamated concept of an unofficially recognized school makes it possible for the municipality to support subcontractors who rent privately-owned buildings to operate educational institutions. This saves the municipality millions of shekels in planning and establishing official schools, which are required to meet government standards, and in renting residential buildings to use as schools - a practice that does not conform to standards but is widely used in East Jerusalem by the municipality and private groups. Moreover, this system also saves the Education Ministry money as it spends less per pupil in these schools.

No numbers

There is no clear answer to the simple question of how many unofficially recognized schools operate in East Jerusalem. According to the Jerusalem Education Administration, commonly known by its Hebrew acronym MANHI, there are 20 unofficially recognized schools in East Jerusalem. However the Department of Unofficially Recognized Education, which is solely responsible for licensing these schools, lists only 13 schools of this type. And the confusion does not end there: The official Education Ministry list of educational institutions, which appears on the ministry's Web site, features no less than 35 schools under the unofficially recognized status.

Because there are only 50 schools in East Jerusalem that operate inside the official system, the unofficially recognized schools play a significant role in the quality of education. Because these schools belong to dozens of private organizations, which differ markedly from each other in their capability and their goals, it is difficult to examine these schools as a single entity - some charge parents tuition, and some do not.

"This is a completely permeable market," says Mahmoud Abu Khadar, the imam of Shoafat. "The most profitable businesses in the eastern city are schools. There is no supervision of what is happening in them. Come here at 9 A.M. and you'll see children already wandering around outside the schools."

"There are clearly different levels here," says the father of a pupil in an unofficial school. "I pay $1,200 per year to send my child to school and that does not include transportation, uniforms, extra-curricular activities and field trips. Consider what it would cost if I sent three children, and the school is subsidized by the Education Ministry. There are unofficially recognized schools that don't take money, but their situation is like that of the public schools: There's violence and neglect and the children don't learn anything. I wouldn't send my children there."

In a report pertaining to the years 2003-2004, Jerusalem city comptroller Shlomit Rubin investigated the opening and supervision of unofficially recognized schools. According to her findings, there was not even preliminary discussion or collaboration between the municipality and private organizations running the schools. She noted that in a number of cases, the institution was not opened in response to professional considerations or an overall view of the education system. Moreover, ambiguous relations between the municipality and private parties had been in existence for several years without an official arrangement.

"Some of the unofficially recognized schools fire teachers every year and rehire others in an effort to avoid granting tenure," says a Palestinian educator from East Jerusalem. "There are no computer rooms, no laboratories, no conditions, no teacher training or supervision. Until we solve the problem of deprivation in the classroom, that is how it will be. You are constantly engaged in a struggle for the existence of schools and you neglect the level of education. The problem is that we are constantly attacking the Education Ministry and telling them that there are not enough schools - so how could we prevent them from opening unofficially recognized schools? That's the catch with the Education Ministry and the municipality. Permits to open unofficially recognized schools flow smoothly from the ministry, even in the case of substandard schools. The ministry does not have the time to check and actually see them. I believed that some of the private schools, which have high tuition charges, would get subsidies from the ministry and become official schools or at least we would see a reduction in tuition. But, unfortunately, this hasn't happened. That's what bothers us. They could provide better education and reduce tuition."

Hussam Wated, of the Beit Hanina Community Administration, summarizes the Catch-22 that plagues residents: "There is an order of priorities, and we have not yet even investigated the issue of unofficially recognized schools. If we demand to close them now, because of all of the irregularities, the pupils will be the ones who are hurt by this. There is damage we can stand and damage we cannot stand. Parents prefer to see a child attend school rather than to discover that there is no place for him. This is the dilemma that we constantly weigh."

Passing the buck

In regard to school supervision, MANHI reports, "The Education Ministry is responsible for the supervision of all schools under the unofficially recognized status in East Jerusalem, as in the rest of the state of Israel. There is no plan to transfer responsibility for unofficially recognized schools to MANHI."

The Education Ministry reports, "MANHI is responsible for unofficially recognized schools in East Jerusalem, but the Department of Unofficially Recognized Education in our ministry is responsible for licensure. MANHI conducts pedagogic supervision."

In response to an additional question posed to the Education Ministry pertaining to the contradiction inherent in these statements, the Ministry reported, "There is no contradiction. The Department of Unofficially Recognized Education licenses these schools, but it does not supervise them. The supervisor of MANHI supervises the schools on behalf of the Education Ministry. To that end, there is a supervisor in the Education Ministry who serves, among other roles, as the supervisor of these schools, and his job is to visit them and to supervise their ongoing operations. This supervisor is subordinate to the supervisor of MANHI on behalf of the Education Ministry. MANHI is responsible for physical and organizational infrastructure including construction, renovation and equipment of schools, transportation, security, safety and the like."

Even if one presumes to understand this response, one cannot ignore the complete disassociation between the municipality and the Education Ministry in all matters pertaining to the supervision of these schools in East Jerusalem. The city comptroller wrote, "In any case, there is no supervision [pedagogic or otherwise], in practice, on the part of the municipality of unofficially recognized educational institutions in the eastern part of the city."

Among other examples, the city comptroller cited safety permits, which schools must obtain for licensure by the Education Ministry, that were granted by private safety consultants to some of the schools.

"MANHI officials claimed to the comptroller that they do not understand how certain institutions received permits of this type," the comptroller wrote. "The comptroller believes there is reason for safety engineers, under the auspices of MANHI, to also examine the buildings that were granted permits by the Education Ministry, because if, heaven forbid, there is an accident, the municipality will not be able to free itself of responsibility."