Wow, this was a great year! School in Israel ended this week, and with a full year of in-person classes under our belt, I’d like to share what I am especially proud of at AMIT. I covered most of this and more in my recent Annual Assembly presentation.

Excellent Scores
We continued to increase the percentage of our students who passed both the bagrut and higher-level “excellence” bagrut courses. For the fourth year in a row, AMIT’s scores led all other school networks. In 2021, more than 50 percent of our students passed the more rigorous math exams, a gain of 8 percentage points in 3 years and a full 10 points above the national average. The increases in “excellent” math, physics, and English scores are critical because they set our students up for success in elite army assignments and university admissions—and they mean we are delivering on our promise to maximize our students’ potential. 

The Chana & Yisrael Malek, z”l, Educational Ecosystem Program
This school year, 5,000 students in 25 schools participated in The Chana & Yisrael Malek, z”l, Educational Ecosystem Program, in which the doors of our schools opened to the medical, finance, and start-up world. The program is designed to develop real-world skills like critical analysis, creativity, planning, communication, and teamwork to help AMIT students succeed beyond the classroom. Our students worked on real-life issues off-site with mentors after receiving lectures and studying subject content presented by successful professionals in the field. While this program grew out of a desire to give the two-thirds of AMIT students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds access to successful leaders, we now recognize the incredible impact of this initiative and will be expanding it to all AMIT students.

24/7 After-School Program
More than 3,500 students in 8 schools benefited from our 24/7 after-school program this year. AMIT runs the program in conjunction with local partners in informal environments. We find that this is an effective forum to facilitate leadership skills, create volunteer opportunities, and provide academic mentoring and tutoring. The advantage of this kind of holistic program cannot be overstated—students who participated in these programs saw their scores increase at a significantly higher rate than students who did not participate. Plans are underway to expand the program to serve more than 7,000 students in 15 schools next year.

Online Courses
More than 100 teachers taught 130 online courses this year after a rigorous vetting process that ensured quality and a diverse group of offerings. The program enabled us to offer many advanced classes in smaller schools (where the numbers couldn’t justify hiring a specific teacher for advanced physics, for example) and the periphery (where it is extremely difficult to find teachers for advanced subjects). We also were able to offer college-type interdisciplinary and specialized courses designed to pique intellectual curiosity. An additional benefit of the online courses was the classroom interactions among students from different schools, geographies, and social classes—an important step in meeting AMIT’s goal of breaking down silos in klal yisroel (the broader community).

Integrating New Schools
Over the past two years, AMIT integrated three large secular high schools and one new girls’ religious high school. This year, AMIT was also chosen to operate a boys’ religious high school (modeled after our successful Bar Ilan Gush Dan school) and a pluralistic vocational school beginning in the fall. In addition, AMIT made substantial progress in working with our secular schools to better define and integrate values within their schools this year. We were able to leverage the framework of value and identity formation that we have been using in our religious schools.

National and International Competitions
We’ve talked about the humus project that went to the SpaceLab, but the accomplishments don’t stop there. An AMIT team from Beit Shemesh won first prize in Amazon’s Israel challenge for their recycling project. A team from Yerucham will represent Israel at a UN conference to present their proposals for eliminating hunger in Ethiopia. A student from Beer Sheva won a European Martial Arts competition. The list goes on! What I want to stress is that for every winning student and team, there are literally thousands of other AMIT students who are growing in skills and confidence from participating in national and international academic and sports competitions.

My greatest thanks to AMIT’s teachers and principals, who lead by example and inspire me every day, and to you, our incredible partners who support everything we do.