The Ministry of Education presented tonight (Tuesday) for the first time a program to deal with violence, initiated by Education Minister Yifat Shasha Biton, Channel 12 reports.
The program includes several steps on the student level, teaching staff, and additional steps that will be implemented at the school level. Among other things, special centers will be set up to report cases of violence and a staff member and a year of service will be placed on the staff.
Under the proposed outline schools will be required to detect loneliness problems or exclusion in classrooms. In addition, educational institutions will be required to hold a dialogue on violence twice a week.
The Ministry of Education will allocate special budgets for expanding students' experiential activities, such as a culture basket, trips and more outdoor activities.
Parents will be included in the school's discussion groups on violence issues, and will be offered lectures by experts on the subject.
In September and October, there were 1,738 sexual assault incidents in educational institutions, compared to about 4,600 cases during the entire past year.
Beyond that, there were 943 incidents of violence on the school grounds and about 1,831 incidents of cyberbullying.
252 students reported having suicidal thoughts, 70 student self-harm cases, nine life-threatening game cases and 59 suicide attempts were also reported.