Overview
- About 2.6 million pupils returned to roughly 27,800 schools on Tuesday, including about 180,000 first-graders and 143,000 12th-graders.
- The Education Ministry set the first week to strengthen belonging and resilience in classrooms and introduced a junior-high ban on mobile phones on school grounds.
- New curricular moves began this year with financial literacy for ninth-graders and a wider rollout of artificial intelligence training for teachers and students that will also factor into matriculation exams.
- Officials acknowledged persistent shortages of qualified teachers, especially in math and science, and cited national test declines while special-education enrollment rose to roughly 418,385 students.
- Border communities have reopened schools with rising student numbers and will receive targeted investment of NIS 364 million in 2026 to rebuild and expand local educational capacity.