By Helga Abraham
When Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Ashdod Municipality realized that the city’s state religious high schools were stuck in a chronic downward spiral of low standards and loss of students to secular schools, they turned to AMIT. The mission: to take over management of Ashdod’s two-state religious comprehensive high schools and to further bolster religious education in the city by establishing a yeshiva high school for boys.
“We see our entry into Ashdod as a major challenge,” says Dr. Amnon Eldar, director-general of AMIT, “both in terms of raising scholastic standards and enabling religious children to continue their studies in a stimulating, religious framework.” This is not the first time that AMIT has entered a city on a large scale, explains Dr. Eldar. “It is precise because of our experience and our ability to enter a city ‘holistically’ that the Ashdod Municipality turned to us.” Ashdod Mayor Dr. Yehiel Lasri affirmed that AMIT was chosen after extensive study of AMIT’s institutions across Israel.
“We were extremely impressed by AMIT’s skilled staff, its pedagogic proficiency, and experience in promoting academic excellence.”
While Ashdod is known primarily for its port and its beautiful beaches, it is also a rapidly developing city with a mixed population of 210,000 residents. In addition to its traditional population of Sabras, immigrants from Morocco, Georgia, and Romania, the city has absorbed a massive influx of Russian immigrants – who make up practically thirty percent of its population – Ethiopian immigrants and more recently new immigrants from France.
The main concern of Ashdod’s Municipality derives from the significant gap in standards between the city’s secular high schools and its state religious high schools. The numbers speak for themselves: 85% of students in the city’s secular high schools graduate with a Bagrut certificate compared to 68% in its state religious high schools. The low standards of the latter have led to a situation where almost half the students from the city’s state religious elementary schools leave the religious network at the end of the 6th grade, a situation which AMIT has set itself to rectify, as it takes over management of the city’s two-state religious comprehensive high schools.
The approach will be two-pronged, explains Dr. Eldar. “First and foremost we have brought in new, dynamic principals assisted by the professional backup of the AMIT Network, and we are encouraging students in the city’s state religious elementary schools to participate in enrichment classes in the new AMIT schools. In this way, they will be exposed to the AMIT Network from a young age. But the main key to turning around the religious education in Ashdod will lie with our principals.”
