Personnel crisis in schools: only 12 teachers hired under individual contracts

Despite the repeated promises made by the leadership of the Ministry of Education to reform the education sector and improve the situation, the data on the implementation of these plans hardly indicate success, Barkat Michaeli reports in his article on 0404.co.il.

According to the Ministry of Education, in recent years there have been attempts to promote contract teaching and professional retraining programs to attract quality personnel from the labor market into the system. The program has allocated approximately 100 targeted rates for the 2025-2026 school year, with a special emphasis on STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

However, actual data by 2026 shows a huge gap between plan and implementation: at the moment, only 12 teachers have been hired into schools through individual contracts, and in total there are about 40 candidates in this area – figures that are far from the needs of the system.

The chairman of the parliamentary commission on education, Zvi Sukkot, blamed the situation on the teachers’ union, which, according to him, is blocking the expansion of individual contracts with teachers.