Even compared to the education systems in Israel, the score of Haredi girls in mathematics is 474 compared to 473 in public education, and 454 in the National-Religious public education. In reading, the score of Haredi students was 522, compared to 510 in public education and 494 in National-Religious public education. These remarkable results point to the tremendous potential within the Haredi education system regarding achievements and skills required for leading professions in the economy.

Eli Paley, the head of the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, states: “Instead of examining the education system through the narrow lens of core studies, PISA research evaluates skills relevant to the job market. Just as with the results for accounting, where Haredi seminary students excelled and achieved the top results with a 96 percent passing rate, similarly, in PISA research, Haredi female students prove their skills and the inherent potential within the Haredi sector.”

Paley adds, “It is worth noting that the teachers who brought Haredi girls to high achievements, even in comparison to other OECD countries, are teachers who, for years, did not receive the salary increases of the ‘Ofek Hadash’ reform. In recent days, after approving ‘Ofek Hadash’ supplements for them, an unfair public debate is underway about whether these teachers, who have proven their contribution to the skills of their students and their contribution to the economy, are entitled to receive what a non-Haredi teacher is entitled to.”

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We can continue to flounder in the muck of the battles, slander each other, feed the media and let the politicians on both sides make political profit. On the other hand, we can also try to think outside the box and propose a move that, although it does not solve the problems from the root, will at least provide an immediate, even if not perfect, answer to some of the basic problems.

About 400,000 Haredi men and women are of working age (25-64). The employment rate among Haredi women stands at 79%, similar to the rate of women in the non-Haredi population (81%). The big problem is among Haredi men, whose employment rate is only 52%. Even the men who do work usually hold low-paid jobs – which is the result of the lack of quality professional education. A Haredi man earns, on average, half the salary of a non-Haredi Jewish man (8,800 NIS compared to 17,000 NIS). Bottom line, about 65% of the Haredi workforce participates in the labor market. More than 250 thousand Haredi go to work every morning. Beside them, 100 thousand men do not work and invest all their time in Torah study.

The lion’s share of Haredi society is already in the labor market. The big problem is productivity and low wages, and, as mentioned, these are the result of a lack of appropriate education.

Instead of continuing to grumble and complain about an unproductive sector, it’s time to produce adapted solutions for said sector, which will dramatically improve the professional abilities of the Haredi who are already in the labor market – or who will enter it in a short time.

Unlike a secular man whose preparation process for his professional career actually begins in elementary school, continues through high school and reaches the academy, the Haredi man’s professional career usually begins at the beginning of the third decade of his life – and after his marriage.

Therefore, in order to optimally integrate the Haredi man into the labor market, a strategic plan must be implemented that will include professional, high-quality and supervised training courses adapted to the Haredi lifestyle and the later age at which the professional career of Haredi men begins. Instead of the Haredi man taking the first job that comes his way, which in many cases is dead-end job with a low salary, he will have the opportunity to find a professional path that suits him and integrate into the employment market in an optimal way.

It was only recently that the high grades achieved by the Haredi seminar graduates in the accounting course were published, despite the fact that they studied in a unique and adapted course without an academic degree. And in the field of high-tech, in collaboration with senior industry officials, a non-academic program was built for girls of Haredi seminars -which was an extraordinary success. Its graduates are integrated into senior positions in the industry and earn a salary similar to their counterparts.

Following a study we conducted at the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, in collaboration with Aharon Institute, the MeGo program was created, operated through the Kemach Foundation, in which Haredi youth without prior background are trained for high-tech jobs. These are clear examples of how in various professions training can be adapted to the Haredi sector, without an academic degree and without harm the professional quality.

True, these solutions are not perfect, and indeed it might have been better for the professional training to begin at a younger age and on the accepted academic path, but as of now this is the best we can do, as we will not be able to reach more profound agreements anytime soon.

So, what is more important to us – to win an idealistic debate, or to reach a solution that will advance us as a society? I suggest choosing the second path.

Meir Hirshman is a Haredi research fellow in the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, chief editor and comptroller of a major Torah literature project in Machon Yerushalayim and a guest commentator on Haredi radio stations on political and social issues. 

The Article was first published in Hebrew on Yisrael Hayom (Israel Today)

For Employment data in the Wohl Data Centre click here.

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Haredi women are substantial to the labor market in Israel today, and certainly in the near future. Especially regarding the issues of Haredi employment rates and quality, special emphasis should be given to them. Currently, the situation is far from ideal: a Haredi woman earns monthly on average 30% less than a Jewish non-Haredi woman. Hourly wages are not far off, and estimated to be 25% less for the Haredi woman (based on Israel Tax Authority data analyzed by the Haredi Institute).

The quality of employment is tightly connected to the quality of training that Haredi women receive. The initial and most significant training for the labor market is given to the vast majority of Haredi women as part of the Haredi seminars for girls: 150,000 Haredi women are working today, to which approximately 10,000 women are added every year, the vast majority of whom, over 8,500 girls per year, enter the labor market as soon as they complete the professional training in Haredi seminars. The seminars are not only the largest training body in Israel, but also the central and most important platform for training female graduates of the Haredi education system for the workforce. The training phase in the seminars is critical to the quality of the Haredi women’s employment: upon graduation from the seminary, most of them get married and go to work. Therefore, during the years of study in the professional training courses in the seminars, there is an almost unique opportunity to prepare the girls for the job market in a significant and professional way, and there is a fundamental importance to the quality of the professional trainings provided to them in these years, and the quality of their adaptation to the world of work.

In the research we conducted on the professional training in the Haredi seminars for girls, we found significant budget deficits in both the teaching and professional courses offered by the seminars, a complete lack of pedagogical guidance or assistance, and lackluster infrastructures that do not meet the needs of the training.  The findings are all but symptoms of this fact – the government does not recognize the seminars’ important role in the professional training of Haredi women.

Building professional and high-quality training systems requires great resources: updating content to adapt it to the needs of employers, building new training programs, building a broad curriculum of soft skills and other required aptitudes. Seminars, which charge maximum tuition fees from their frequently poverty-stricken students and their families, do not have the necessary resources. Moreover, in parallel courses in academia such as accounting and software engineering, there is a budget of tens of thousands of shekels per year for each student, while in the very same courses taught in seminars and under full academic supervision, there is no budget at all.

The research findings raise the critical need for creating a national program for reforming the professional training in seminars, which will include two important parts: professionalism and job placement.

For professionalism – it is required to establish a governmental body that will be responsible for the content of the training programs in the seminars: this body will accompany the forming of the professional programs; produce enrichment content according to the skills required in the labor market; examine the need for new training programs and assist in their assembly; review the scope of the majors so that they are in line with the demands of the labor market; and budget fitting pedagogical infrastructures to that end.

For job placements – it is required to establish a placement system for the graduates of the seminars: a system with regional employment development units and branches of the center within the various seminars. the department will include professional sections, employer relations units and specializations, and will have the ability to assimilate and control the study programs in the seminars, professional enrichment and workshops for occupational development, job databases and more.

Only by taking systemic responsibility – budgetary, pedagogical and regulatory – the desperately needed change in Haredi employment will be made possible.

Yehudit Miletzky is head researcher in the field of employment at the Institute, and specializes in education and employment in the Haredi community, from gender-based, community-based and geographical perspectives.

The article was published in Hebrew in Calcalist on 11 April 2023

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CEO Udi Ben Dror spoke and referred to the holding of the conference while the mass demonstrations against the judicial reform are in full swing. He also mentioned that the role of the institute is to promote a strategic discussion of cooperation. After him the researchers of the ultra-Orthodox institute took to the stage and participated in a professional and extensive panel on the challenges the Haredi society faces, and how they are addressed, if at all, by the state budget that is to be approved by the Knesset.

In his speech, Minister Barkat referred to the importance of the high-tech industry for the development of the Israeli economy, and noted that if he looks years ahead, then he would like to see 25% of the workforce in Israel in the high-tech industry, 2 million Israelis in total, including Haredi people. He added that in his opinion, the private sector should be responsible for training them for the labor market.

“The best at doing this is the private sector, followed by the municipal authorities, and in last place is the Israeli government,” the minister explained. “The more responsibility we can transfer to the private sector, the better our situation will be. My ambition is for businessmen in the State of Israel to take full responsibility for the entire issue of employee training – for this matter I estimate that there is almost no budget limit.”

Barkat concluded his speech: “I see a national mission in the success of integrating the Haredi sector into the world of employment. Consider me a partner first of all for planning, and of course after that for execution. The Ministry of Economy and Industry will be at your disposal for any challenge you pose to us – because we have no choice but to succeed.” .

The CEO of the Haredi Institute for Public Affairs, Udi Ben-Dror, referred in his speech to the political discourse surrounding the judicial reform promoted by the government: “What worries the people is where the country is going and what it is going to look like in 10-20 years. On the one hand it’s a crisis, on the other hand it can become an opportunity – and that’s what I hope we’ll be able to do. The role of the Haredi institute is to try to transform the existing discourse from a confrontational one into a discourse of problem solving, strategic advancement and planning.”

Regarding the state budget, Ben-Dror said: “Unfortunately, the state budget as it currently stands lacks a real message in the main challenges of Haredi society – which are actually the challenges of Israeli society as a whole.”

The Panel of the Institute’s Researchers: Is the Budget Plan a Solution or a Problem?

In the panel of the institute’s researchers on the state budget in the light of Haredi society participated the following: Dr. Eitan Regev, VP of Research and Data at the Institute; Yehudit Miletzky, senior researcher in the field of employment; Dr. Shai Stern, senior researcher in the field of housing; and Roni Barboy, senior researcher and head of the fields of education, health, welfare and emergency policy.

Dr. Regev commented on the panel that the word “Haredi” itself has almost no appearances in the state budget, and explained that this indicates that the policy makers lack knowledge and accurate data on the Haredi sector. According to him, an effective budget policy for the Haredi sector, one that will benefit the country as a whole and remove unnecessary barriers, must be based on as detailed data as possible. “In many places, the problem in promoting an effective policy is not a lack of agreement between the right wing and the left, but the lack of sufficient and accurate information about what needs to be done and where the problems are,” he explained.

Dr. Regev provided an example of a plan that is not sufficiently based on data: “There is a lively discussion about building a new Haredi city somewhere in Kasif near Kasife in the southern region.  When we check the employment and transportation data, we know that a third of the Haredi women get to work on foot, another third by public transportation, and another third of them take less than fifteen minutes to get to work. Only 29% of Haredi women have a driver’s license. Now they want to send 40-50 thousand Haredim to a place that is about an hour plus from any employment center. I’m talking about employment that exists today, not in 20 years. This is another example of how data can influence decision-making.”

Yehudit Miletzky, a senior researcher in the field of employment, stated that unfortunately the state budget as it currently stands is not “good news” in the field of employment. “There are two sections in the budget that focus mainly on technological training which will increase the number of Haredi male students, and make technological colleges accessible to more Haredi people. Nevertheless, when we try to think of the budget as a tool for implementing governmential policy, it is impossible to reach the goals of 2030 with the current budget in any way.”

“It is indeed good news that, in between the lines of the budget, the state says that they understand that Haredi people need adjustment, that employment in Haredi society has unique characteristics,” Miletzky added. “The very fact that the government put the issue of professional training on the table within the budget is a new statement after many years of very clear Tracking for the academy. The understanding that ultra-orthodox society today relies mainly on technological training is an important understanding.”

Dr. Shai Stern, a senior researcher in the field of housing, said that the current budget is “insufficient” in finding a solution to the housing crisis, but it is “a bit harmful” when it comes to the Haredi society itself. “The budget removes all kinds of barriers, in licensing, in issuing permits. It acknowledges the housing crisis and tries to give tools to local authorities and district committees to overcome bureaucratic barriers,” Dr. Stern explained. “The problem from our point of view at the institute is, that the budget does not take into account he abilities of the Haredi community to catch up with the gaps that exist in the field of housing; It even goes to the extent of being a bit harmful, in some ways to those abilities, especially when the gaps are greater than those in general society.”

Roni Barboy, senior researcher in the field of education, commented on the fact that the Haredi sector does not appear at all in the budget in the context of education, despite the many challenges that are on the table. Barboy pointed out four major challenges: the lack of a central planning body for the Haredi education system; Basic differences between the Haredi and state education systems; the improvement of supervision and regulation; And improving the quality of core studies (math, English, science and digital literacy) in elementary educational institutions for boys.

Barboy addressed the issue of core studies in the Haredi education system and offered to look at the issue from a different angle. According to her, the Haredi education system is not a single unit, and when it come to discussion on the subject of core studies, it is necessary to separate the education systems for girls and for boys. “If we break down the issue of boys’ education into its smaller parts, that means pre-primary and elementary education, then we have to remember that in these school years all boys have to study core studies to varying extents, between 55% and 100%. The problem is that the quality of the education they receive is incredibly low. It is due to the lack of personnel training – and neither the Ministry of Education nor the local authorities take care of this issue.”

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In the interview elaborated Paley on his article regarding his faith in a shared future for Haredi and secular here in Israel.

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Ben Dror presented the initiatives that the institute promotes regarding the integration of the Haredi population in the labor market, with an emphasis on initiatives that avoid the public debate’s sore points such as the integration of core studies (math, English, computers and science) in Haredi education.

For the full article, go here.

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Paley presented Academy as the main tool for integrating the Haredi population into the labor market – but also as the biggest obstacle to this very goal:

“Haredi society has been the disruptive child in the classroom of the academy for 15 years. Attempts are being made and huge resources are being invested under the assumption that the best way to lead the Haredi population into the labor market is the academy, and not only is this not true, the academy is the main obstacle today to the integration of the Haredi population into the labor market. The fact is, that we turned the academy into a conduit to the job market – and that was a step backward and not forward”

Photo: Yariv Katz

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