Human Rights Watch: Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools: "SECOND CLASS | 2001
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Although Israel's constitutional law does not explicitly recognize the right to education, its ordinary statutes effectively provide such a right.19 However, these laws, which prohibit discrimination by individual schools, do not specifically prohibit discrimination by the national government. And Israel's courts have yet to use either these laws or more general principles of equality to protect Palestinian Arab children from discrimination in education.
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Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools, is based on Human Rights Watch investigations at twenty-six Arab and Jewish schools and on nationwide statistics compiled by the Israeli government. Nearly one-quarter of Israel's 1.6 million schoolchildren are Palestinian Arab citizens and are educated in schools run by the Israeli government, but operated separately from those of the Jewish majority. The report found striking differences in virtually every aspect of the education system. The Education Ministry does not allocate as much money per head for Palestinian Arab children as it does for Jewish children. Their classes are 20 percent larger on average. They get far fewer enrichment and remedial programs-even though they need them more-in part because the Ministry uses a different scale to assess need for Jewish children. Their school buildings are in worse condition, and many communities lack kindergartens for three and four-year-olds. Palestinian Arab schoolchildren do not have the same access to counseling and vocational programs. One of the largest gaps is in special education, where disabled Palestinian Arab children get less funding and fewer services, have limited access to special schools, and lack appropriate curricula. ISBN: 1-56432-266-1, 187pp, 20.00, December 2001
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