Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara responded on Friday to a High Court petition concerning government funding for “first floor” studies in ultra-Orthodox education networks, warning of significant gaps in compliance with core curriculum requirements.
“Education Ministry data point to significant gaps in the network institutions’ compliance with their obligation to teach the full core curriculum, as well as failures in the ability to supervise compliance with those obligations and enforce them,” she wrote.
The response further stated: “Accordingly, the state has determined that continued receipt of funding under the ‘All Israeli Children’ principle will be conditional on compliance with the basic obligations that apply to the network institutions, including full core curriculum studies as established in the official education curriculum, the employment of teaching staff with appropriate training.”
It continued by saying that “full participation in measurement and assessment programs, cooperation with supervision and enforcement mechanisms, and compliance with reporting requirements. These requirements will apply beginning in the current school year.”
High Court justices criticize state for transfer of funds
United Torah Judaism’s Degel HaTorah chairman, MK Moshe Gafni, responded to Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara’s decision to condition funding for ultra-Orthodox education on the teaching of core curriculum subjects and additional requirements.
“Who appointed Baharav-Miara to decide everything in the country according to her own agenda? An elected government is forbidden from making decisions during an election period, the Knesset’s ability to legislate is restricted, but a dismissed attorney general is allowed to decide on her own how haredi children will be educated and what they will study?”
“If she wants to dictate what haredi children should learn, then I demand, to the same extent, that all Israeli children study the 613 commandments, Jewish tradition, Torah, Prophets and Writings, and Gemara, and anyone who does not study all of these should not receive funding.”
The Yesh Atid Party petitioned Israel’s High Court of Justice in December 2025 over budget transfers to ultra-Orthodox educational institutions. According to a letter the party sent before filing the petition, the government decided on December 22, 2025, to establish a ministerial team to formulate and implement government policy on ultra-Orthodox education.
Party members claimed that “Behind this sanitized name lies, in practice, the intention to ‘circumvent’ the core curriculum requirement imposed on haredi educational institutions and the restrictions imposed on institutions that do not meet this obligation, as well as the Supreme Court ruling and the attorney general’s directives regarding the reduction of funding for haredi educational institutions whose students did not receive an exemption or whose military service was not deferred.”
The High Court later heard the petition and issued an interim order freezing the transfer of coalition funds to unsupervised ultra-Orthodox educational institutions.
During the hearing, the justices sharply criticized the state. Justice Gila Canfy-Steinitz asked the state’s representative: “Under what law or procedure were the funds transferred?”
Justice Yael Wilner added: “This is unlawful conduct.”
Wilner later said the Knesset Finance Committee had discussed the funding only after the money had already been transferred.
“If this was not told to the committee members, then this was a sham discussion. Pulling the wool over their eyes.”
The state’s representative, attorney Neta Oren, acknowledged that most of the funds had been transferred before the required approvals were received, saying that “there is such a practice.”
Wilner replied: “It is not ‘undesirable,’ it is illegal.”
