Adalah Petitions Supreme Court Challenging Education Ministry's Discriminatory Appointment of Educational Psychologists for Arab Bedouin Schools in the Naqab

On 4 May 2004, Adalah submitted a petition to the Supreme Court of Israel demanding that the Ministry of Education (MOE) provide the necessary number of educational psychologists' positions to schools in the seven Arab Bedouin towns in the Naqab (Negev), in accordance with its own set criteria. Adalah further requested that the Supreme Court instruct the MOE and the Ministry of Social Affairs, the respondents in the case, to apply equal rules in the allocation of educational psychologists' positions between Jewish and Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel in the Naqab.

Adalah Attorney Morad El-Sana filed the petition on behalf of five individuals - parents of children in the towns of Lagiyya and Rahat - the Follow-up Committee on Arab Education, the National Union of Arab Parents, the Naqab Culture Association, the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Naqab, and in Adalah's own name.

Primarily, MOE-appointed educational psychologists are responsible for identifying, diagnosing and treating students with learning and developmental disabilities; providing suitable educational frameworks for students with special needs; giving consultation to teachers, principals, and other educators in dealing with the educational, emotional and behavioral difficulties of students; and providing consultation on the community level.

The MOE sets criteria, as follows, for the number of positions allocated in each town in order to provide suitable educational psychological services for children: one position per 500 kindergarten and first graders; one position per 1,000 students in the second grade through high school; and one position per 300 special education students.

However, the number of educational psychologists' positions actually allocated in the seven Arab Bedouin towns in the Naqab - Rahat, Lagiyya, Kessife, ‘Arora, Segev Shalom, Hura and Tel el-Sabe' (Tel Sheva) - fall far short. While the MOE's set criteria for these towns amount to 49 positions, only 30% or 15 positions currently exist. In comparison, in Jewish towns in the Naqab, the situation is quite different: Of the 27 positions designated in accordance with the MOE's criteria, 80% or 21 positions currently exist.

The petition includes a vast amount of supporting documentation including reports of the State Comptroller, public commissions, academic studies, official statistics, and an expert opinion. Based on this data, Adalah argued that the respondents have failed to fulfill their obligation in accordance with their own set criteria, thus, violating the students' right to education as well as perpetuating discrimination against Arab Bedouin students in the Naqab.

According to Dr. Marwan Dwairy, a specialist in developmental, educational, and clinical psychology, who provided the expert opinion included in the petition: “the lack of educational psychologists harms the right of many children to a suitable and appropriate education, specifically with regard to special education students … makes it difficult to identify and diagnose children with special needs … [and] prevents the development of programs for children with special needs as well as attending to their problems, which in turn has a negative influence on their educational achievements.” Further, Dr. Dwairy states that: “the Bedouin children whose families are mostly of a lower socio-economic level and not able to [privately] acquire psychological diagnosis, the educational psychologists' service remains the only provider of this important service.”

Adalah argued that attending to the special needs and mental well being of students by providing educational psychologists' services is an institutional responsibility under the Special Education Law - 1998. The MOE's failure to do so impedes and prevents the students' regular course of study. As the MOE has appointed most of the educational psychologists in accordance with its own set criteria in the Jewish towns in the Naqab, its gross failure to do so in the Arab Bedouin towns constitutes discrimination. Moreover, the MOE's discriminatory implementation of its own set criteria violates the rule of law.

The right to education, Adalah further argued, is a constitutional right, a part of the right to dignity, especially when it relates to barring students from elementary and basic educational services and infringes on the minimal conditions necessary for cultural existence: “Infringing on the right to education in this case reaches a degree of damaging the personal dignity and freedom of the individual, [rights] which are set forth in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom – 1992.”

The current situation harms the petitioners' right to equal educational opportunities since their children are unable to fulfill their basic right to education, contrary to other students who receive educational psychologist services and enjoy the right to education. This inequality perpetuates the low level of education of the Arab Bedouin children in the Naqab as well as blocks additional educational opportunities.

H.C. 4177/04, Yusef Abu-Abied, et. al. v. The Ministry of Education, et. al