Taking the register

By PEGGY CIDOR
Let’s take a look at the figures for this school year, compared to last year: Next week 245,000 students will be filing into their classrooms, compared to 230,000 last year. Despite all the optimism regarding an eventual increase in the number of students in the public secular or religious domain, this year most of the 15,000 newcomers will attend either haredi institutions or Arab schools, be they private, semi-private or public schools.
Last year the public institutions totaled 100,000 students (secular, religious, haredi and Arab), whereas this year there will be 123,717 students There are 180 schools in the public system in the west part of Jerusalem; 337 semi-private schools in the haredi sector and 57 public schools in the Arab sector.
There are 2,430 classrooms in the official sector (including semi-private and public), with 57,920 students altogether.
There are 3,454 classrooms in the haredi sector and 91,640 students.
In the Arab sector, there are 1,457 classrooms for 45,430 students. In addition, there are 21,000 Arab students who are registered in the recognized but not official sector, which does not include the totally private system in the Arab sector.
The percentage of students in Jerusalem who obtain their high school diploma stands at 61 percent for 2009 and 2010. The average number for the country is 59 percent.