Kisch denies the crisis: "Teachers retire every year - the numbers are fake"

Minister of Education Yoav Kisch (Likud), who did not receive an exemption from running in the Likud primaries next week, convened a press briefing this morning (Wednesday) during a visit to the ministry's Northern District headquarters in Nof HaGalil ahead of the start of the school year. Regarding the director-general's circular on teacher-parent relations published this week, Minister Kisch said:

"There were quite a few challenges, and I must say that there are places where we did not go down to the level of detail that everyone would have expected because we wanted to create a basis for good cooperation between teachers and parents and to strengthen the status of the teacher vis-a-vis the parents, which is reflected in the circular."

Regarding the additional director-general's circular on the non-use of mobile phones in middle schools, Kisch said:

"It will not be simple given the opposition of the teenagers, but it is a very significant and important move that is backed by in-depth research."

However, the Minister of Education dedicated the main part of the press conference to his war against the chairman of the Teachers' Organization, Ran Erez:

"We found that almost a third of the reports by the Teachers' Organization about teachers joining the organization are incorrect. This is a matter that was not handled by my predecessors. These gaps stem from about 30,000 teachers who are already retired, for whom the Teachers' Organization is not entitled to receive money transfers from the Ministry of Education, and yet the Teachers' Organization still reports them as active teachers and asks for money for them; some of them have not been active for decades and are over eighty years old. What is also disturbing is that we found about 8,000 records of people who do not hold a teaching certificate and are not in our records as teachers; we do not know who they are."

Kisch added: "I want to check that public funds were not paid illegally to the Teachers' Organization and to create a mechanism where this thing will be reported through the pay slip. I will not allow the theft of public funds."

Regarding the resignation of about a thousand school principals, which was reported by the "Manhigim" organization, Kisch denied it: "The numbers circulating are fake. They stand at the average annual amount. And regarding the shortage of teachers, one must understand: every year thousands of teachers retire and leave, and they need to be replaced; every time everyone is surprised by this. There will always be thousands of teachers missing at the point of departure, and every year we absorb new ones, and compared to previous years, the situation is better. Last year there was a gap of about 500 teachers, and this year I believe we will not reach much more than that, a gap of a few hundred."