The Education Ministry released figures Thursday showing that fewer high school students are taking and passing their Bagrut (Matriculation) exams. Only 44.4 percent of Israeli high school seniors received their Bagrut last year, down from 46.3 the year before.
Five years earlier almost 50 percent of graduating seniors passed the annual exams. The number of students passing the Bagrut rose until 2006, then began dropping.
The Education Ministry traded hands in 2006, and again in 2009.
Education Ministry officials cautioned against diagnosing a downwards trend in the number of Bagrut recipients, noting that they still do not have data regarding the most recent school year.
Officials also blamed the drop in the percent of students earning a Bagrut certificate on demographic changes, particularly growth in the Arab and hareidi-religious sectors. Data from last year showed that only 32 percent of Arab and other non-Jewish students received a Bagrut certificate, compared to almost 60 percent of Jewish pupils.
In the hareidi-religious community, where students are largely encouraged to focus on religious subjects to the exclusion of advanced secular studies, less than six percent of students received a Bagrut. Test rates were similar among Arab residents of Jerusalem.
The percent of high school students who are not hareidi or Arab – that is, those most likely to take and pass the exams – dropped by more than 10 percent over the past six years, from more than 71.5 percent to less than 61.5 percent, Education Ministry officials said. The change in demographics could be a key reason for the dropping percent of Bagrut recipients, they suggested.
The hareidi-religious population is the fastest growing in Israel, and the Arab growth rate is above average as well. According to a poll published last month in Foreign Policy, hareidi-religious and Arab Israeli pupils could, together, make up roughly 50 percent of 18-year-old high school pupils in a little more than 20 years.