The High Court of Justice on Tuesday ordered the state to explain why it continues to fully fund the two main party-affiliated haredi (ultra-Orthodox) education networks despite what petitioners describe as systemic noncompliance with basic academic requirements.
By doing so, the court took a significant step in a long-running battle over core curriculum studies in Israel’s haredi school system.
The conditional order was issued in a petition filed by Hiddush – Freedom of Religion and Equality, which has for years challenged the state’s funding model for haredi boys’ schools.
At the center of the case are two networks: Ma’ayan Hahinuch Hatorani (Bnei Yosef), affiliated with Shas, and the Independent Education Center, affiliated with United Torah Judaism. Combined, they educate tens of thousands of students and receive billions of shekels in public funding annually.
Demand for conditional state funding
In practical terms, the justices are demanding that the Education and Finance ministries explain why state funding is not conditioned on the three basic requirements that apply in the official school system.
Those three conditions are: teaching the full core curriculum, including math, English, and science, at the required number of hours; employing properly trained teachers to teach those subjects; and participating in standardized external exams such as Meitzav and international assessments like PISA.
The court also questioned the way oversight is conducted. According to the petition and the state’s own filings, supervision of the networks largely relies on schools’ self-reporting, with inspections coordinated in advance.
Given this, the justices asked why there is no real-time, school-by-school monitoring system – and why institutions that fail to meet requirements are not removed from the networks or penalized financially.
The state must file a sworn response by April 15.
A longstanding issue
Although the latest hearings intensified in January, the dispute dates back years and has resurfaced repeatedly across legal and political contexts. Hiddush has long argued that the state’s funding structure allows haredi boys’ schools to receive substantial public budgets even when they do not teach the full core curriculum required in the education system at large.
In earlier proceedings, the court pressed the state for concrete data: how many hours of core studies are actually taught, how compliance is calculated for funding purposes, including through the so-called “cluster method,” and what enforcement tools are used when schools fall short. Tuesday’s conditional order signals that the justices were not satisfied with the answers provided so far.
According to Hiddush, the government’s recent filings exposed deeper problems. The organization says the Education Ministry does not independently verify whether teachers in the networks are qualified to teach core subjects.
It also states that students in the Independent Education network do not participate in Meitzav exams. Even under what Hiddush describes as the ministry’s broader interpretation of compliance, dozens of institutions were found not to be teaching the full core studies, yet funding was not reduced accordingly.
Hiddush further alleged that Education Minister Yoav Kisch sought to withhold from the court a document from the Finance Ministry’s Budget Division indicating that no boys’ schools in the network teach the full core curriculum.
According to the organization, the State Attorney’s Office refused that request. The state has not publicly addressed that claim in the court’s latest decision.
Attorney Dr. Yifat Solel, legal adviser to Hiddush, said the order shows that “the entire budgeting system for the haredi networks is built on a fiction,” arguing that large sums of public money continue to flow without meaningful academic standards or oversight.
A conditional order does not mean the court has ruled against the state. It does, however, indicate that the justices believe the government must now formally justify its position.
At stake is a broader question beyond technical education policy: whether publicly funded schools operating outside the official system can continue to receive full state budgets without meeting the same academic and transparency requirements imposed on other schools.
After the state submits its response in April, the court will decide whether to make the order final, which could require changes to the funding model, or accept the government’s explanation. For now, the justices have made clear that the current arrangement requires answers.