Israeli High Court says no to shorter school days

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An Education Ministry decision to shorten the school day for students on the autistic spectrum, in order to compensate for a staffing shortage, was struck down by the High Court of Justice on Sunday, stating that this violated the rights of parents and had a disproportionate impact on students.

In response to the lack of special education staff, the Education Ministry had published a temporary order on June 14 to shorten the school days of autistic school children by 45 minutes, from 4:45 p.m. to 4 p.m. There was a shortage of 1,300 special teaching staff from the previous year, leading to 1,200 classrooms operating irregularly, and some had been merged and even closed. The 2023 decision resulted in 230 classrooms having shortened hours. The ministry managed to cut the shortage almost in half since the decision was made.


The Education Ministry said that this was the best option out of all the alternatives explored, but petitioners, parents of autistic students and the Alut Israeli Society for Children and Adults with Autism, contended that there were many other alternative courses of action that didn’t sweepingly impact all schools. The shortages were not the same throughout the entire country, the petitioners argued, and this made the impact of the decision disproportionate to the problem, which was accepted by the court.

The court also accepted the argument that the decision infringed on the parents’ constitutional right of freedom of occupation. The Education Ministry had made the decision only three months before the start of the school year. The court said that parents with autistic children have limited scheduling windows and need to reconsider their days and time allotments if almost an hour were to be taken from them.