Haaretz (Israel)

The Education Ministry is to ban Bible aid booklets that help elementary and junior high school students by "translating" the text into simple Hebrew. Private publishers defend the booklets by arguing that biblical Hebrew is a foreign tongue to young Israelis.

Roughly 1.5 million Israeli children will go back to school on Monday, as the start of the academic year is expected to go ahead with few disruptions. But on the eve of back to school day, it emerged that a lack of security guards will leave the gates of one-third of Israeli schools unprotected.

By Or Kashti
Some 3,500 children in grades 1 through 6 dropped out of school last year, and the Education Ministry has no information about them, according to internal ministry data published here for the first time.

The Palestinian Authority education system opened the 2008-2009 school year on Sunday, with approximately 250,000 children expected to attend classes. In Gaza, the new school year got off to a shaky start, as the Palestinian Teachers Union went on strike to protest Hamas's takeover of its office and the dismissal of several education administration employees.

The founding conference for an Arab pedagogical council is to be held this fall, several weeks after the scheduled September 1 start of the school year. The purpose of the new, independent body is to formulate a comprehensive educational policy for the country's Arab community. Among the issues on the council's agenda are the history and civics curriculum taught in the schools, the textbooks translated from Hebrew and the high drop-out rate and low matriculation rate among Arab students.

WASHINGTON - "This is one of the oddest things we have encountered in recent years," an Israeli official said of a long sequence of events that began with intense American pressure to allow two young Palestinian students to leave Gaza to study in the United States and ended with the U.S. barring their entry and canceling the visas it had granted them.

Security forces reportedly furious over lack of effective legal measures taken against Jewish rioters.

Thirty ultra-Orthodox men who studied for their psychometric exams in Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox college passed with a score well above the national average, despite not having studied mathematics and English.

By Or Kashti
In a stark turnaround, the Education Ministry is in advanced negotiations with the Lev Leviev Foundation to approve its Zman Masa (Journey Time) program for bolstering Jewish identity.

Ginger Software founder and chief executive, Yael Karov, knows all about spell checkers' helplessness to help. From conversations she's had with professionals, dyslexia organizations in the U.S. and Britain, at conferences abroad and with dyslectics themselves, Karov has learned that many people stopped using spell checkers altogether.

Education Minister Yuli Tamir last week received recommendations for a comprehensive education plan for the Arab community, part of which is to be implemented in the next school year.

Twelth-graders in Hurfeish participated in an unusual science class this Tuesday. The students watched earnestly as the teacher sketched the human body on a special board. Immediately afterward, the sketches appeared on the laptops at each student's desk.

Education Minister Tamir: New system would create 'democratic and tolerant religious stream.

U.S. college asked for proposals for resolving Israeli-Palestinian conflict through developing J'lem.

Over the past three or four years, the teaching of English at the Retamim elementary school in Ashdod has been stepped up. Classes now begin in the first grade, and by the second grade pupils know the ABC's and are capable of putting together monosyllabic words.