Grant amount
NIS 850,000
Opening Excellence Classes in Amit School Network
Opening and Operating Additional Thirty-Five School-Based Excellence Classes for 700 Ninth Grade Students and Eight Online Elective Groups for 200 Students
Opening and Operating Additional Thirty-Five School-Based Excellence Classes for 700 Ninth Grade Students and Eight Online Elective Groups for 200 Students
The Amit School Network is the second largest charter school network in Israel with 46 secondary schools, mostly for Jewish religious students. Amit collaborated with the foundation to increase the circle of excellence in mathematics and physics (two grants totaling 4.2M NIS in 2012 and in 2015), resulting in more than doubling the number of five-unit graduates in mathematics, reaching 24% of the twelfth grade graduates in 2019.
Now, Amit is turning its attention to its middle school pipeline. They found out that currently 26% of their ninth grade students graduate middle school from an excellence class, which means that almost all of them then enter the five-unit track in high school. In order to widen the pipeline, they identified an additional 14% who currently study in the high ability group in mathematics, that are potentially able to study in an excellence class and then major in the five-units track.
These 14% are the target audience of Amit’s new program. The idea is to gradually open 35 new excellence classes for 700 (14%) ninth grade students. The students will be attracted to the new classes by offering them high level real-world content that would rely on mathematical thinking, modeling and reasoning. This new content will be selected from the arsenal of assignments that is currently developed by academic institutions, aligned with the 5-6 levels of the PISA mathematics framework, and offered during two additional teaching hours.
In addition, Amit plans to open eight online elective groups for 200 outstanding students who study in existing excellence classes. These groups will offer highly advanced content from the worlds of cyber computing, data sciences and high-tech, by making use of complex mathematical and algorithmic models. Each such class will study for four additional dedicated weekly hours.
Two learning communities for teachers will operate throughout the project, with the participation of 65 mathematics teachers, including 10 who teach the existing excellence tracks, so that they are also encouraged to use the new tasks in their classes, as well as the teachers of the online elective groups. The 35 school principals will convene in four meetings every year in order to follow on the progress.
In addition, Amit will organize seminars and workshops for teachers and events for students. The success of the program will be measured with a diagnostic test that was prepared by CET, with the goal for at least 80% of the students to successfully meet the 5-6 levels of the PISA framework.
* The text presented above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation Board / Grant 417