Education Ministry to extend summer programs, add middle school catch-up initiative after weeks of closures

The Education Ministry will extend state-subsidized summer programming for kindergarten to third grade by three weeks and expand it to include students through sixth grade, as well as launch a summer academic catch-up program for middle-school students, following five weeks of school closures due to the war with Iran, according to a statement from Education Minister Yoav Kisch.

“In light of the gaps that accumulated during the war, I instructed the ministry to extend summer programming by three weeks, expand services to all elementary school students up to sixth grade, and launch the ‘Summer Preparatory Program’ for middle schools, which will help fill in the gaps and provide a stable and supportive framework for students,” says Kisch in a statement.

Kitsch says the expanded programming is intended to provide “educational, emotional, and social continuity for Israel’s students during the summer months” after the disruption to the schoolyear due to the war.

The IDF Home Front Command announced yesterday evening that wartime restrictions would be lifted across most of Israel starting Thursday, as a fragile ceasefire in the US-Israeli war with Iran took hold, allowing schools to reopen and resume functioning normally for the first time since February 28, when the war began.

The initiative is expected to cost approximately NIS 750 million ($242 million). However, according to Hebrew media reports, this figure has not been coordinated with the Finance Ministry, and it remains unclear whether the funding will be approved.

The subsidized elementary-school program, which functions much like a day camp, typically runs for about three weeks for kindergarten through third-grade students, but will now operate for twice as long and include older elementary grades.

The new middle-school program, by contrast, is designed as an academic catch-up framework to help students make up for lost learning time.