At a conference held yesterday for school principals in the Haifa district, Minister of Education Naftali Bennett said that from now on private diagnoses will be meaningless in the education system, and the only ones who diagnose will be experts from the Ministry of Education itself.
The diagnostic program will be budgeted to the extent of 75 million NIS, and within 4 years it will cover all schools in Israel.
Those who paid for a private diagnosis benefited:
"What has happened here is that the tests have become an industry to ease matriculation," Bennett told the administrators,
"Parents take their children for a paid diagnosis and automatically receive discounts. It's over. We will perform all the diagnoses. If a child is a candidate for diagnosis, there is no such thing as sending him outside to a private diagnostician. We, who have no interest, will do the diagnoses. We will ignore external diagnoses , at most we will use this as a trigger to send for our diagnosis. This is good for you managers, because it takes the burden off you. According to the true diagnoses, there will be adjustments. There will be no more adjustments based on quotas, which you have to distribute, but everyone who is diagnosed with a true diagnosis will receive Match".
Bennett emphasized that along with the real diagnosis, it will also be possible for the first time to offer treatment to those who have been diagnosed with a disability. He told about the "dream sages", who set up a garage for vehicles that would fall from a broken bridge, instead of repairing the bridge itself.
"The big thing is that the diagnoses will be used to give treatment, to those who need it, and not for adjustments in exams. This is the essence of education: to find those who need assistance and provide them with the assistance. Until now, there were classes where all the students in the class received an extension of time in matriculation.
And what happened as a result? Again we did not reach equality, because we failed to strengthen those who need help. We will diagnose those who need support and provide it to them, and the days are over in classes where students from well-established neighborhoods, half the class bring diagnoses, and receive relief."
The schools are having a hard time dealing with the private diagnoses
It should be noted that the schools have had great difficulty dealing, until today, with the private diagnoses and with the parents, who did not take the children for diagnosis by the required time, and therefore students, who needed concessions in graduation, did not receive the concessions.
The teachers were also frustrated with the private diagnosis method
Did the article interest you?"I had students in my class who brought diagnoses immediately at the beginning of the year," said a teacher at a six-year school in the estate this week, "and it was clear to me that the child did not need any relief, but the parents were so aggressive and presented the private diagnosis, that I felt that I was unable to start confronting them in particular When they told me that if I didn't give their child all the concessions, they would complain to the principal. On the other hand, throughout the year, there was a student in my class who it was clear to me that he needed an article for a neutral examiner or at least to have the matriculation questionnaire read to him, and no matter how much I tried to help him get the The relief, I couldn't convince his mother to do the diagnosis, and in the end, when she did want to go and do it, it was so close to adulthood that I couldn't do anything anymore.
In the end, with the help of the counselor, I was able to give him an extension of time on the exam, but I have no doubt, in light of my experience, that if he could dictate the answers to someone and not write them himself, he could have gotten a much higher grade on the matriculation exam.
It is very frustrating to see that a parent takes a child who does not have any disability and gets him concessions, which he does not need, and precisely a child who tries hard and really has difficulty, he does not receive the concessions. I really hope that from now on the one who diagnoses will be the Ministry of Education and not private examiners, because our job as teachers is to make sure that those who have difficulty, he is the one who will facilitate the adjustments, and on the face of it, it sounds like the Minister of Education's plan will bring order in this area, and that's a good thing."