How many teachers? How many students?

The teacher training colleges (TTCs), which are run by the Education Ministry, are the main body that trains the main resource on which the education system is based - reserves of teachers. The State Comptroller's Report, however, indicates that the ministry's control over the TTCs and its knowledge of what goes on in them are partial at best - the ministry has no database for collating the needs of the Israeli education system, according to which adjustments could be made each year with respect to how many teachers are needed for each subject.

There are too many TTCs, including several small institutions. The budgeting for the students at the TTCs is inefficient, and is often not in tune with the needs of the system. Similarly, despite advance warnings, the Education Ministry has so far not made a real effort to find out why fewer than half the students who enter the TTCs go on to become teachers. In 2003 the teacher training department of the Education Ministry budgeted 53 TTCs for nursery and kindergartens teachers, elementary school teachers and for some junior high and high school teachers.

These TTCs include colleges that train teachers for the state and state religious schools, as well as for ultra-Orthodox schools. Teacher training for high schools is done at the universities and budgeted by the Council for Higher Education's Planning and Budgeting Committee (PBC). In 2003 the TTCs' budget from the Education Ministry totaled NIS 806 million.

The comptroller's report reveals that 27 of the 53 institutions financed by the Education Ministry have fewer than 500 students, mostly from the ultra-Orthodox sector. There are fewer than 1,000 students in 17 institutions. The comptroller has recommended that some of the TTCs be closed and others merged in order to make more efficient use of the budgets.

The TTCs are budgeted by the Education Ministry according to the number of weekly hours of instruction, and the state comptroller found that this results in inequality, that the average financial support per student in the state TTCs is greater than that in the state religious TTCs. In the ultra-Orthodox sector, the average support per student is even less than in the other two sectors. The formula used for calculating the budgeting of weekly hours has not been updated by the Education Ministry for over 25 years.

The Education Ministry is also not properly checking the number of instructors and students in each college. In two TTCs checked by the comptroller it turned out that the actual number of students was 10 fewer than the figure submitted to the ministry, meaning that these TTCs received greater budgets than they were supposed to. The comptroller proposes that the Education Ministry change the method it uses for budgeting the TTCs and employ the same method used by the PBC or some other model based on productivity rather than on initial enrollment, "that would ensure the maximal production of quality teaching power at minimal cost."

This is not the first time that the matter of teacher training has been raised to the public agenda in recent years. In May 2000 the education minister Yossi Sarid appointed a committee headed by Prof. Miriam Ben Peretz to examine teacher training. The government adopted the recommendations of that commission and the Education Ministry set up two teams to formulate practical recommendations for improving the teacher training system. One of those teams, which submitted its report to the ministry's deputy director-general in February 2003, recommended, among other things, to align the budgeting method for the TTCs with that of the PBC.

The review did not discover any documents indicating that the ministry's directorate had considered the recommendations of the team and the need to implement them. In response to the report, the ministry writes that the handling of the recommendations is being delayed due to the budget cuts and the wait for the recommendations of the Dovrat Commission.

Another principle question raised by the report is whether the Education Ministry should be responsible for teacher training. A position paper from 2000, presented by the ministry to the comptroller, claimed that the ministry, which is responsible for education under the Compulsory Education Law, should also bear the responsibility for teacher training, their numbers and their distribution. The comptroller's examination found, however, that the ministry has no ordered and updated database of the needs of the education system, or figures concerning the number of teachers who are expected to teach in the coming years in the various districts.

In 2001 the ministry did ask the Central Bureau of Statistics to prepare a forecast in this matter, but the CBS provided only a partial forecast that did not include the ultra-Orthodox and Arab sectors and did not detail how many teachers are required for each subject.

Similarly, in 1991, the State Comptroller's Report noted that only about 45 percent of the graduates of the various TTCs are actually working as teachers. That report recommended that the ministry conduct a comprehensive survey regarding the reasons that prevent TTC graduates from working in education. According to the comptroller's recent report, by November 2003 no such survey had yet been conducted.

Figures compiled by the CBS indicate a more optimistic picture than in 1991 - 72 percent of TTC graduates in the state sector and 66 percent of graduates in the state religious sector find teaching jobs, with 61 percent of the state school teachers and 52 percent in the state religious system working as teachers for at least five years. The rate for all TTC students who make teaching a career, however, is still low - just 37-51 percent - due to a high dropout rate at the TTCs.

The comptroller proposes the ministry conduct a comprehensive survey of the issue, which will assist "in better evaluating the number of teachers to train and thereby lead to savings in teacher training expenditures and a reduction in the rate of these institutions graduates who do not find jobs in education."

	Beit Berl teacher training college. The Education Ministry has little control.
	Photo by: Ariel Schalit