Number of Applications and Admissions to the Lowest Class (Rural), 1933 - 1944, Arab Secondary Education in Palestine before 1948 (Nakba), British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume II - Page 650. Chapter XVI: Social Services : Section 2: Description of Education Systems : Table 9

CHAPTER XVI.

Table 9.

PUBLIC RURAL SCHOOLS.

Befor the expansion scheme
Under the expansion scheme and later

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I 1933 1934 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944
Applications I MM r.ss i i i. "" io.ses * """ '""" "•"" ia, ""
Admission a,76614,924 6,446 6,229 7,146 7,217 8,518 9,574
Percentage of
admissions to
applications 57% 67% 58% 57% 65% 70% 70% 69%
It will be understood that these figures apply only to those villages where schools exist. Elsewhere there can be neither applications nor admissions.

65. Owing to the expansion of urban and rural schools at Government expense and still more at that of Local Authorities the extent of Arab education, measured by the percentage of children attending school, has changed materially in the last 14 years. It will be seen that the children attending school in 1930 were mostly born either during or immediately after the war, at a time when the birth-rate was low and infantile mortality was high. The children who were of school age in 1935 were born after the Occupation under more favourable conditions, and so were more numerous, as shown in table 17.

Since then the curve of increase in the school-age population has flattened somewhat and the school population aged 5 to 15 (i.e, in effect the number of school places) has increased at the rate of about 4000 a year. Nevertheless it is clear that, on the present scale of financial provision, the approach to a universal ten-year period of schooling for Arab children is still in the distant future.

Table 17 shows separately for Arabs and Jews the relation between school-attendance and school-age population in the elementary period.

Arab secondary education. (a) ARAB PUBLIC SYSTEM.

66. "Secondary" is defined as covering schooling of whatever type from completion of the seventh elementary standard to entry to a university, i.e. it extends roughly from the age of about 14 to the age of 19.

Secondary schools or schools with secondary classes exist in sixteen out of the twenty Arab towns of Palestine and include three distinct grades of education. The lowest grade of secondary

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