v Activities 2003

Publications:

FUCAE publishes a 100-page newsletter, Issues in Arab Education, which reaches teachers, academics and policy-makers nationwide.  Issues in Arab Education provides a forum for both experts and the general public to discuss and debate new educational issues and the current challenges affecting the education system.  FUCAE also publishes precedent-setting research by some of Israel’s leading experts on Arab education as well as regular articles in the Arab and Jewish press.  FUCAE’s publications are available to researchers, professionals, teachers and students who use them as the basis for their own work.

Among this year’s important publications is the Comprehensive Research Study of an Alternative Arab Educational System, which concludes the following:

The establishment of an alternative and independent structure under the auspices of and in cooperation and full partnership with the Ministry of Education The proposed solution is the establishment of an independent, Arab educational structure; similar to the State Religious Jewish Educational system, which is characterized by its own pedagogical approach, and suited to the cultural and historical values of the society which it serves. The wide publication and distribution of the research study has resulted in public discussion of the critical state of the Arab educational system and the necessity for its reform. The Parliamentary committee on Education met during February to review the study’s conclusions and examine their application.

The research abstract is available on FUCAE’s website, now in English at:

www.arab-education.org/english.

Programs:

The Ministry of Education Watchdog Project

As FUCAE’s main activity, The Ministry of Education Watchdog Project advocates for equality for Arab students and schools at the highest levels of government.  By combining quantitative research with advocacy and lobbying campaigns within the Ministry, FUCAE’s dedicated core of over 40 professionals volunteer their time and expertise to ensure Arab students receive the same treatment, funds, and resources as their Jewish counterparts.  When intensive lobbying within the Ministry bears no fruit, FUCAE teams up with lawyers from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah to take the Ministry of Education to court.  The Ministry of Education Watchdog Project staff, made up of Arab government officials, professors, lawyers, school personnel and activists, maintains ongoing research and lobbying, averaging about 15 major campaigns per year. 

The Identity Project:

     The Follow-Up Committee strongly believes that the empowerment process is necessary in the creation of an equalitarian dialogue between unequal parties. The Ministry of Education’s current and past narrative with regard to the Arab minority, dating back to the 1948, consists largely of focusing on the historical victory of establishing the state of Israel; however subjected to the systematic denial of both the general Palestinian narrative, and also that of the Israeli Arab minority.

     In FUCAE, we regard education as a primary tool for the attainment of the narrative of both sides. Education for national identity, based on democratic and humanistic values will empower the Arab pupils while placing them in a more equivalent position with regard to their Jewish pupil counterparts. The program method stems from both basic civil and democratic rights as well as a recognized educational need, and is divided into units which discuss various topics.

The Program for Educational Identity’s primary goal is to create curricular materials which can be used in the future and eventually transformed into a matriculation unit. Pupils will be familiarized with historical, environmental, and architectural   aspects of the land. The final unit is composed of a series of lectures and study days on a wide rage of topics like: the status of women in Arab society, the influence of globalization on national identity, political and secular Islam, and multiculturalism.

Education Now in The Unrecognized Villages of The <ぐ颵ᇏ芻ꨀ봀௎噓�۷?譗Ѿ੷譟廎�ދ삅ٴࢋｐࡑڋ셃˨잃㬄狘菛ࡁࡁ??ʹ쀳쟃ࡁ䇇€謀樁！౐邐进捶进捶进捶譖菱౦栀諜捾ۇ揨捚ᗿቀ捘䛇Ą>Negev

 ‘Education Now’ in the Negev tackles with the most severe problems facing the residents of unrecognized villages, with the support of OXFAM Great Britain. The project sets out to increase and improve preschools and special education facilities in the area, decrease the high drop out rate, enable and empower local educators, administrators and educational directors to restore and renew the local educational system.

The project focused this year on:

1. Empowerment of local educators to take an active role in the prevention of pupil drop-out.

2. Training Kindergarten teacher's to detect preschoolers with special needs and assist them in receiving the special care they need and deserve.

The Website Development:

The accessibility of information is a crucial key in the promotion of the right to equal education. Today’s world is widely and increasingly inter-connected through the internet. This tool is a powerful means for the distribution of knowledge and information, which are primary factors in the empowerment of minorities and assisting the process of advocacy and affirmative action. The Follow-Up committee on Arab Education has relied very little on its website in the past and due to budget constraints has tried to use other means for the distribution of knowledge, programs, conferences and other important issues. There is a need for a strong tri-lingual website (in Arabic, English and Hebrew) which will provide updated information on the work, activities, projects, conferences, scholarship programs and statistics is quite imminent.  

As the Follow-Up Committee strides forward, its mission and goals have an increasing impact on the population of Arab pupils and students. The website’s primary function is to serve as a window to our future developments: to reach higher numbers, invest more resources and yield more results. Undoubtedly, this endeavor will pay off as our work becomes recognized all over, attracting partners, and sponsors and other beneficiaries. 

The Coalition for Promoting the Arab Special Education

This coalition is made up of representatives from several prominent NGO’s:

Shatil, The Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education, The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Adalah, The Galilee Society, Yedid, B’zhut, The National Committee for Arab Parents in Israel and Raaya. The coalition promotes various areas of importance to Arab children with special educational needs. Some of these issues are: the lack of Arab speech therapists, transportation of Arab children with special educational needs to their educational facilities, inadequate allocation of human resources and supervisors who serve Arab children with special needs, unsafe special education facilities lack of appropriate and facilities for Arab children with hearing impairments, mainstreaming, integration and inclusion of children with special needs within the central educational system

One of the main reasons for the inordinately high rate of drop-outs in the Arab educational system is the lack of detection and support of children with learning disabilities (LD).  As reported by Human Rights Watch in its report “Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools”, the JDC-Brookdale Institute determined in a 2000 study that while 8.3% of Arab children are known to have special needs, “[this number is] an underestimate; it may be assumed that the actual gap is greater.  This underestimate is a consequence of a lack of an appropriate system of identification and diagnosis of children with learning disabilities in the Arab sector.”  In a 2001 paper submitted to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Israeli government also recognized “the under-diagnosis of learning, behavior, and speech disabilities, which it attributes to “a severe lack of diagnostic services in the Arab sector.” 

Civic Education, Civic Programs, and Alternative Curriculum Study in History for Arab High Schools:

Current curricula teach Arab students about Jewish history and Israeli history from a Jewish point of view, almost entirely ignoring the point of view of Palestinians, and the contributions of Arab citizens to Israeli society. This new project aims to bring together a team of experts to study the Ministry of Education’s curricula for Arab High schools in History, Civics and Geography.  Following initial research, the team is designing alternative curricula more appropriate to Arab students’ cultural and linguistic needs.

Databank Project

FUCAE is viewed by many to be the source of reliable information regarding Arab education in Israel.  This being the case, the FUCAE has initiated a comprehensive electronic Databank Project to collect, organize and make available a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data on Arab education.  By analyzing this data, FUCAE is able to identify “at-risk” regions, gaps in school funding and services, and emerging sociological trends throughout the Arab sector.  FUCAE’s own work is grounded in this research, helping to decide which communities to target and which cases to focus on in our Ministry of Education Watchdog Project. The Databank is now available to students, educators, academics, government officials and the general public at the FUCAE office, and will be available on the World Wide Web by the end of the year.

Study Days, Conferences, and Seminars:

FUCAE regularly hosts study days, seminars, and workshops on various topics on the cutting-edge of Arab education.  These forums bring together Arab educators, policy-makers, leading academics and activists to present new findings, encourage discussion and networking, and organize to address systemic educational problems.

Two major conferences were held in 2004:

1. The 6th Conference on Arab Education

 The conference, held once every four years, focused on the need for an alternative structure to the present Arab Educational System, mandated in the research study conducted on the present’s system’s flaws, and on the Nation Identity Program

2. International Conference on Education, Social Development and Empowerment among Indigenous Peoples and Minorities: An International Perspective:

Preparations for the Conference: The International Conference on Education and Empowerment among Minorities and Indigenous Peoples was planned and organized by The Follow-Up Committee, Shatil, Heinrich Boll Foundation and The Department of Education at The University of Beer-Sheba, These parties worked together throughout the preceding year, and successfully brought together people from minorities and indigenous populations all over the world. Among the countries and cultures represented in the Conference were: The Indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand, First Nation Canadians, Native Americans, minorities studying in the German school system, Mexico, Guatemala and Palestinians.  Some of our guests arrived before the conference and toured the Negev, Jerusalem viewing the separation fence, and the North. Dr.  Brian Rice, our guest from Canada, a descendent of the Mohawk tribe, gave several talks in the Nazareth area, and met with some NGO’s to exchange knowledge and experience. Brian gave a presentation at the Follow-Up Committee office which encompassed Native American History, colonialism, land expropriation, institutionalization of native children and cultural genocide.

Conference Highlights and Key Topics:

·        The presentations elicited strong response and discourse which revolved around indigenous people’s rights to education and the struggle for obtaining cultural and educational autonomy.

·        One illustration of the significance of the acknowledgement of indigenous culture and educational autonomy is apparent in the curricula and teaching methods’ components. Indigenous peoples and minorities have the right to become educated about their own history, culture, heritage, language and customs. The methods for teaching these themes are often non-conventional and involve outdoors learning, story telling, taking part in ceremonies, rites and rituals, as well as maintaining a reverence for clan relations. The various values instilled in indigenous culture are often lacking in mainstream education, subsequently native children become estranged from their culture and subsequently labeled as failures. The prevalent ignorance of Native history, culture, language and folklore indeed creates a barrier between the indigenous child and mainstream education.

·         The education of minorities and indigenous peoples necessarily touches on all major spheres of life; the relationship between the community and land, the question of ownership, redistribution of resources, and the nature of the collective economy, which is so common among indigenous peoples. In fact,  the inclusive nature of community itself to minorities and to indigenous people, with implications on the nature of ownership, economy, decision making and spokespersons were all focal issues in discussions and presentations on educational models.

·         Clearly, gender and ethnic discrimination as a widespread phenomenon is at the forefront of all native and first nation agendas. Girls and women throughout the world are torn between their appointed roles in the community, and their right to an empowering educational experience. It is the responsibility of the state to take into consideration these issues when planning educational policy and curricula.

·          The issue of state responsibility for education of minorities was a strong theme throughout the conference, and was emphasized strongly by the Jewish and Palestinian Israeli speakers.

·         Ultimately, the preservation of native languages and culture as a counterforce to the attempt to eliminate them was a prominent common denominator, world wide.

3. The Study Day on the Dovrat Commission Recommendations: held in Nazareth, concluded that accurate application of the reform implicates primarily the following amendments with regard to Arab Education:

      Equality in resource allocation, school budgets and teaching hours and furthermore application of strictly equalitarian criterion in application of the Dovat recommendations.

      Reorganization, relocation and reinforcement of educational/ cultural work via the regional administrative offices, while emphasizing the importance and role of the supervisors in the area.

      Recommendations for the establishment of an external institution for evaluation in addition to the internal evaluation mechanism of the educational system.

      Implementation of the law for free and mandatory education from age three throughout the system. Reinforcement of public education with a special emphasis on diminishing gaps between the Jewish and Arab sectors.

      Policies of affirmative action will be applied to the infrastructures in the Arab Educational System while forming operative plans and allocation of all necessary resources for the closing of gaps throughout Arab education; thus guaranteeing provision for application of the commission’s recommendations in the Arab Educational System.

      The establishment of an Arab Educational Administration thus guaranteeing the proper Arab professional representation in the Pedagogical Secretariat in the Ministry of Education and Culture.

      Creating a clear status for Arab school principals and granting them responsibility and authority with regard to hiring, promoting and firing teachers.

      Objective school principal appointments accompanied by an entirely professional screening process, which evaluates appointee’s skills and suitability.

      The organizational structure of the regional educational structure will include local authority representatives who will work aside the professional educators and community representatives. The above forum will have the authority and responsibility to make decisions jointly.

      Delegation of authority, responsibility and public mandate to the regional educational authority to determine curriculum and important subject matter in fields like history, civic education, Arabic, geography and national identity.

      Complete equality between recognized and unrecognized Arab villages in the Negev and the Galilee with regard to education will be applied.

      Education will be socially equal and non-selective in both the public and private schools.

      Joint Jewish/Arab regional educational departments with complete authority and responsibility for equality in budget and resource allocation in both systems.

Reorganization and Staff Development:

Following the sixth conference on Arab Education and the election of Mr. Nabieh Abu Saleh as chair of Board of Directors, FUCAE with the assistance of Shatil, initiated a process of reorganization and strategic planning. With the marking of new goals and priorities, the organization launched a development plan for 2005. Several areas chosen for focus are:

·        Continuing to support and reinforce education in the unrecognized localities in the Negev.

·        Early childhood education: developing phonological awareness, empowering parental involvement in schooling and assistance of their children in completing homework assignments.

·        Children with special needs- kindergarten staff and parental empowerment to recognize developmental issues and obtain assistance when needed.

·        Improving the achievements of high school pupils by training English teachers to provide the highest quality English Education possible.

·        Expanding developing and improving programs for teaching civics, national identity, democracy and peace in primarily Arab but also in Jewish Schools.

Staff Training:

Mr. Raja Za'atry responsible for lobby and media work has been participating in regular training and development programs.

Ms. Manar Gomaid is taking part in a series of secretarial and administrative training programs.

Pamela Butter head of resource development has joined a forum for advanced fund raisers held in Shatil Haifa and is currently developing new projects and relationships with potential donors. Soon a European intern will be joining the resource development department in FUCAE.

Accomplishments of 2004:

Since it’s inception in 1984, the FUCAE has achieved many important accomplishments, which have had great impact on the Arab education system.  Most of the work carried out by the team is a result of much hard work that may have begun with only a simple phone call, alerting the FUCAE to a specific situation.  This has been, and continues to be a major aspect of our work, as we deal with situations such as school closures, teachers’ redundancies, new legislations, court rulings etc, within only a day’s notice. 

Some of the greatest recent achievements:

ü      The Dovrat Committee on Education, appointed in late 2003 by the Prime Minister and Minister of Education, serves as a national task force whose purpose is to make recommendations for a reform of the general Israeli educational system. FUCAE has appeared before the Dovrat Committee on several occasions and presented our position. Dr. Haled Abu-Asbe, who assisted FUCAE in carrying out the study on the Arab Educational System, and Professor George Kanzi, both FUCAE representatives, made presentations on a variety of aspects of Arab Education today. Consequently, FUCAE’s former Chair and current board member Raji Mansoor received a government appointment to join the committee. Periodic committee meetings are held and FUCAE’s input is an essential part of the committee’s work. Most important, during the last few sessions of the Dovrat Commission during December, FUCAE's current and former Chair and the staff appeared before the committee to submit our position on the final recommendations. The Dovrat Commission adopted FUCAE's recommendation that: reinforcement of the collective Arab identity is one of the main focuses in the reform of the entire educational system and Arab Education in particular.

ü      The Shoshani Report of late 2002 recommended a set of changes in the criterion for advancement hours which are allocated according to country of origin, date of parents’ aliyah, and location in a national priority area.

      Recently FUCAE issued a petition with the representation of The Association for Civil Rights to the Supreme Court opposing the inequality in the number of advancement hours for special education for Arab and Jewish children; because consequently, Arab students receive fewer points on the scale for qualifying for advancement hours, which represents 5% of the total budget. The Supreme Court ordered the Ministry of Education to provide updated data regarding the allocation of resources to the Arab school system in order to examine to what extent the Shoshani Report principles are upheld.

ü      The decision to accept university applicants on the sole basis of certificates of matriculation, instead of the additional component of the psychometric examination results, two years ago was progress towards a system which promotes minority educational rights by enforcing affirmative action. Recently this decision was repudiated, resulting in FUCAE’s initiation of meetings with The Minister of Education, the Parliamentary Committee on Education, and the Chairman of the Committee of University Deans.  When these meetings didn’t remedy the problem, FUCAE issued a petition to the High Court of Justice prepared by The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, and joined by other NGO’s, against the Minister of Education, Culture and Sport, the Universities, and The Council of Higher Education, demanding psychometric exams not be used for Arab student applicants to universities. The petition spells out research conducted on the psychometric examination’s incompatibility with eastern culture and explains the tendency of higher success rates among western applicants. The court refrained from ruling in this petition and currently strategies for tackling this issue are being discussed.

ü      FUCAE’S call for legislative reform of the Law of Local Councils (separate bank accounts for education in each local authority) guaranteed educational budget’s security in lieu of the widespread phenomenon of liens made on local authority’s bank accounts to collect debts. This juncture was reached after a serious of meetings held with Ministry of Education, and now secures budgets intended for pupil transportation, construction and renewal of education facilities.

The Follow-Up Committee wishes to express its gratitude for the support given by the following Foundations and Organizations:

The New Israel Fund

Oxfam Great Britain

The Abraham Fund

The Welfare Association

Shatil

The US Embassy Cultural Attaché

The Fulbright Commission

The National Committee of Arab Mayors

Contact Information:

Atef Moaddi- Director

The Follow-Up Committee on Arab Education

P.O.B. 2154

Nazareth 16000

Tel: 04-6466566  Fax: 046460647

Email: arabedu@netvision.net.il

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