Beit Shean Excellence Program

Beit Shean is a local council in the Northern District with approximately 20,000 residents. Its education system comprises 4,970 students, of which 1,553 in four secondary schools, all run by the ORT network. Only two of the schools operate an excellence class in middle school, attended by 40 students. The Beit Shean council is part of the Ministry of Education’s program to promote excellence in the periphery. The ministry provides additional teaching hours and funding for management and personnel.

The council is planning to allocate four of the teaching hours it receives for each middle school to create four new excellence classes. The search for high level learning material to be used in these classes led the council to approach the foundation. They are seeking the foundation’s support in identifying appropriate material and in training their teachers on how to teach the new material. The mathematics and science teachers will go through professional development over 60 hours every year, in which they will become familiar with the pedagogy of the new material.

In order for this process to take place, the council plans to hire the services of an academic institution that would provide the new content and assist the teachers in preparing and implementing the new tasks in their classes. The council intends to appoint a mathematics coordinator who will support the local excellence manager in orchestrating the effort. The council will organize seminars and workshops for the school principals and teachers and convene meetings with parents of students of the excellence classes.

The goal of the program is within three years, to have 45% (105) of the ninth grade students graduate from an excellence class and 80% of the graduates of the excellence classes succeed on a diagnostic tool, aligned with PISA’s top 5-6 proficiency levels.

The program will be run through Beit Yatziv, a not for profit association of the Rashi Foundation which leads a STEM education initiative in Beit Shean in collaboration with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.