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'We can offer you programs for education of leaders with a sense of community wherever they work, from laboratory to politics'
Goran Mehkek / CROPIX Author:Karmela Devi During last year's visit of the President Josipovic to Israel, a possibility for cooperation in education has been presented. Croatia would, theoretically anyway, import experts from Israel and programs that would stimulate the best and the most talented. While they are the world's leader when it comes to science, Israelis are straggling with their education system that is becoming more elitist and the results of their students on PISA international tests are relatively bad. Schools in Israel have one of the biggest gap in the world between results of good and bad students. Last week Arnon Ikan, head of the Israel Centre for Excellence in Education has visited Zagreb. That Jerusalem institution of excellence was established in 1990s by American Jews, headed by than President of AIPAC, biggest organization in the USA that represents
Jewish people. Responsible at AIPAC have concluded wisely that the best way to contribute to Israel is to establish a school that will promote excellence.
Scholarships
Q. Can a student from Croatia enroll in your school? A. No, it has to be a citizen of Israel. We do not accept children from abroad. School can be attended by non-Jewish kids, but it is important that their families live in Israel. Main reason is that we do not want kids who are 15 or 16 years of age to live too far from their families. This is a boarding school and the program is very demanding. But we are thinking about opening our doors for abroad students, in the future.
Q. What is the percentage of Arabs in the school? A. We have from 8 to 10% of non-Jewish kids, and mostly they are Arabs, whether they are Christians or Muslims, than Druze Q. What is the scholarship fee in your school? A. Scholarship fee is around USD 8000 per year which, in comparison to other boarding schools around the world, is not expensive. Boarding schools in the USA, for example, cost USD 30.000, 40.000 and even 50.000 per year. Basic philosophy is that those who have shown knowledge to pass our exams can not stay outside the schools because of financial reasons. Therefore, money can not stand between talented student and our school. Most of our students come from the rural area and around 80-90% of them receive scholarships. There are two sources of scholarship: Ministry of education and private donations, mostly from the USA, from Jewish individuals or Jewish Foundations. Q. What you are offering to the Croatian schools is your program Excellence 2000 that is used in your organisation but also in some schools in USA and Singapore. What kind of program is that? A. Program has been developed in late 1990s. In Israel, our Centre is conducting it together with the Ministry of education and it is implemented in schools all over the country. It is intended for highly motivated, excellent students in math and science. It is implemented from 4th till 9th grade (from the age of 10 to 15). For this program Centre for excellence does not select students, but they are selected by their teachers in schools. We provide materials by which teachers and students will work, specially designed for those motivated students so it can be incentive for them, to start even more interest for further development of critical and scientific thinking skills. Furthermore, we teach the teachers about methodology, how to work with such students. When school decides to implement our Excellence 2000 program, we start to work with their teachers who teach math and science.
A. There students are indeed brilliant in study discipline and on international tests they score high results. But as we were told by people of Singapore themselves, they lack creativity; they are not strong in thinking outside the established frame. That is what we teach them. If you take their learning skills and discipline and combine it with new way of thinking, creativity you get a lot. Q. There is no doubt that Israel is excellent in science, but is not near to excellence when it comes to the general education in the country. Numbers shows that in your country gap between students who concur teaching materials good or bad is one of the highest in the world. Are you working on overcoming those differences? A. Politics is in the hands of the Government and the Ministry of Education, our Centre does not deal with such issues. Over the last few years there are programs that ministry has started with the aim to overcome such differences. It is studied how teachers work in schools, how much time they spend in the school, how high are their salaries, what is the methodology and how to bring the whole class towards better results.