British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 644

CHAPTER XVI.

Similar grants were given to Jewish bodies other than the Va'ad Leumi and are dealt with below under Hebrew education.

(b) HEBREW PUBLIC SYSTEM (VA'AD LEUMI SCHOOLS).

52. The schools later regarded as forming a Hebrew Public System were at first private and unassisted from public funds. Later they received per capita grants amounting altogether to about £P.2,000 a year. In 1926, however, Government formulated the principle that a larger sum might properly be assigned to these schools, since the public schools were conducted in Arabic and could not therefore be considered as affording educational facilities to the Jewish population.

53. On the other hand it was observed that the Palestine Zionist Executive from their funds had financed Jewish education so liberally that, while the Jews were one-sixth of the total population, the number of children in Jewish schools was nearly equal to the number of Arab children in Government schools, 17,174 Jews to 19,737 Government pupils in the school-year 1925/26. Since the Government (Arab) school system, being entirely dependent on the resources of Palestine, offered facilities for schooling relatively scanty in proportion to the population, it appeared to Government inequitable to subsidise the two systems on the basis of school attendance.

The sum payable from the general revenues of Government to Jewish education was therefore calculated according to the census populations of the two races. The proportion between the Arab and Jewish populations was then estimated at 5 :1 and the sum assigned to Jewish education was therefore roughly one-sixth of the total education budget or one-fifth of the expenditure on Arab schools at the time of assessment. The amount was fixed at £P.20,000 p.a. for a period of five years, after which the population ratio and the amount payable upon it were to be re-estimated. When per capita grants had been paid to those Jewish schools which had not been included in the public system, the remainder of the £P.20,000 was paid on certain conditions as a block grant to the Palestine Zionist Executive for education purposes.

54. The amount payable to Jewish education was re-estimated in 1933 on the basis of the census of 1931. Certain improvements were made in the calculation. Of these the first substituted child population (ten age groups, 5 to 14) for total population. '!'be ratio between the child-populations was then Arabs: Jews: 100 :18.

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