Promoting politically contested change by invisible education policies: the case of ultra-Orthodox public schools in Israel

ABSTRACT

Education policies are typically anchored in official texts that provide a foundation for their enactment in schools. What are the implications of an invisible policy not anchored in any official text due to political motives? This study explores the enactment of an invisible education policy that regulates religious enclave schools. These schools’ curricula are the source of frequent conflict between states and religious enclave communities. The study draws on the case of the National Haredi Education (NHE) reform in Israel that enabled ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) private schools in Israel to affiliate with a new stream of public schools whose regulations were not anchored in any official text. The data comprised interviews with principals, teachers, and supervisors, as well as document analysis. The findings showed that the enactment of the NHE policy was primarily manifested in invisible changes, such as teacher professionalisation and pupil assessment. Curricular changes visible to the wider school community were enacted differently in different schools. Our findings also characterised the implications of the NHE policy’s invisibility. The lack of institutional recognition hindered the reform, but the autonomy of the implementing agents enabled them to promote changes within their purview and become policy entrepreneurs.

KEYWORDS:

• Invisible education policy
• education policy enactment
• religious enclave schools
• Haredi education
• public education

Introduction

Education policies are typically anchored in official texts, providing a foundation for their enactment in schools. These texts may have different normative statuses, ranging from constitutional provisions to internal regulations. However, some policies do not rely on official texts that provide details regarding their implementation. These policies are often the outcome of political motives to obscure their consequences. What are the implications of an invisible policy not anchored in any official text? How is an invisible policy enacted in schools? What are the ramifications and benefits of its enactment? The current study addresses these questions, drawing on the case study of Israel’s National Haredi Education (NHE) reform. This reform, launched in 2013, allowed Jewish ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) private schools to change their status to public schools and affiliate with a new stream of public Haredi schools. Schools affiliated with the NHE stream are expected to teach a full core curriculum that incorporates secular education (SE). Thus, the NHE challenges the traditional ideal model of Haredi boys, which calls for devoting their school years to advancing their expertise in religious studies and then becoming religious scholars who do not work for their livelihood (Hakak & Rapoport, 2012).

Due to the political power of the Haredi parties in the Israeli Knesset (parliament), the NHE reform was not anchored in any official text––neither laws nor internal regulations of the Ministry of Education (MoE). The current study examined how the invisible NHE policy was enacted within schools that joined the reform. This inquiry addresses a gap in the empirical literature regarding education reforms in religious enclave schools, whose unique ideology and lifestyle differ substantially from general society (Almond et al., 2003). Such reforms have challenged policymakers in various countries for decades (Perry-Hazan, 2015b), and recent events indicate that these challenges still thrive. For example, a recent New York Times investigation published on its front cover revealed serious concerns regarding the quality of SE in New York Haredi schools, criticising the state’s reluctance to intervene (Shapiro & Rosenthal, 2022). In the UK, a new Schools Bill seeking to obligate registering unregistered Haredi boys’ schools (UK Parliament, 2022) met with mass Haredi protests (Bloch, 2022).

The paper opens with a literature review comprising several topics: educational change in religious enclave schools, contextual background relating to Haredi education and the NHE reform, and conceptual framework relating to enacting ambiguous and invisible education policies. The next section presents the research design, drawing on semi-structured interviews with principals and teachers employed in NHE primary boys’ schools and with MoE supervisors, as well as document analysis. Our findings showed that enactment of the NHE policy was primarily manifested in invisible changes, such as the professionalisation of teaching and pupil assessment. In contrast, curricular changes visible to the wider school community were enacted differently in different schools. Our findings also characterised the implications of the NHE policy’s invisibility. On the one hand, the lack of institutional recognition hindered the enactment of the reform due to insufficient resources and a mismatch between the invisible policy and the normative environment. On the other hand, the implementing agents’ autonomy to promote changes within their purview and become policy entrepreneurs facilitated certain aspects of the reform. We conclude by analysing the implications of the NHE policy’s invisibility in the context of enclave religious schools serving a ‘minority within a minority’.

Literature review

Educational change in religious enclave schools

Religious enclave communities, whose conservative ideology and lifestyle differ substantially from modern hegemonic groups, reside in many liberal states (Almond et al., 2003). The various conflicts between state laws and religious enclave communities’ norms are among the most pressing issues liberal states have faced in recent decades (see Kymlicka, 1995; Rawls, 2009; Shachar, 2001). These conflicts are of particular concern in states that absorb massive immigration or where enclave communities comprise a substantial population segment.

The field of education constitutes unique challenges to the relationships between liberal states and religious enclave communities. Liberal states strive that all students receive an education that fulfils their right to education, prepare them for citizenship, and promote integration and community cohesion (Robeyns, 2006; Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, Articles 28–29). However, educational autonomy is essential for religious enclave communities to facilitate religious socialisation and minimise exposure to the general society (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019; MacMullen, 2007; Perry-Hazan, 2015b).

One of the main challenges occupying policymakers in various countries concerns the level and content of SE taught in religious enclave schools. Low-quality SE teaching was addressed in the contexts of Haredi (Franken & Levrau, 2020; Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2023a; Lichtenstein, 2022; Perry-Hazan, 2015b; Perry-Hazan et al., 2023; Shapiro & Rosenthal, 2022), Muslim (Kong, 2005; Parker-Jenkins et al., 2017; Tan, 2010), and Amish (Wang, 2020) communities. This challenge has been litigated in the US (Wisconsin, 1972; Young Advocates for Fair Educ v Cuomo, 2019), the UK (Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass School Trust v. Secretary of State for Education and Science, 1985, as cited in Bradney, 2009), Belgium (Mojsdis Chaside Belze v The Flemish Community, 2014), and Israel (Rubinstein & The Ministry of Education, 2014).

Studies have indicated that policies based on punitive sanctions, such as mandating school closure, are typically not enforced due to the enclave communities’ political power or states’ lack of willingness to face fierce confrontations (see Perry-Hazan, 2015b; Perry-Hazan et al., 2023; Tan, 2010). In light of the difficulties entailed in regulating Haredi schools, UK and Belgium refrained from registering Haredi yeshivas for secondary school boys (Bloch, 2022; Burns, 2018; Franken & Levrau, 2020), and, after years of under-enforcement, New York State was compelled to amend the law and provide Haredi schools specific exemptions from mandatory SE policies (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2023a; Wang & McKinley, 2018).

We know little about alternative non-mandatory policies that may facilitate educational change in religious enclave schools. Several studies explored the impact of financial incentives and indicated their potential to encourage religious enclave schools to accommodate SE requirements (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019; Merry & Driessen, 2005; Perry-Hazan, 2014). The NHE reform offers a type of financial incentive, providing participating Haredi schools with more public budgets as an incentive for consenting to change their status from private to public and adopting a full SE core curriculum.

Context: Haredi schools and the NHE reform

Israeli Jews have diverse Jewish identities, ranging from secular to Haredi, with differing cultural, social, and political characteristics (Cahaner, 2020; Yadgar, 2020). The Haredi community in Israel comprises various groups whose common characteristics include submission to the authority of their spiritual leaders, precise observation of the Halacha (Jewish law), insulation from general society, and sanctification of studying Torah (Brown, 2007). Haredi ideology is also associated with rejecting the State of Israel due to its secular and modern foundations (Yadgar, 2020).

Jewish religious texts do not proscribe studying SE in boys’ schools unequivocally. For example, explicit sources obligate parents to teach their children a craft (Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 29a) and warn against the idleness and sinfulness of studying the Torah without working (Mishna, Avot, 2). However, a biblical verse cites an obligation for men to study the Torah day and night (Joshua 1, 8). Interpreting these verses and other related texts is subject to a complex theological discourse. In practice, due to socio-historical reasons, the extreme approaches prevail. Consequently, the Haredi community subscribes to the centrality of nurturing the scholars’ society, in which the ideal course of men’s life is full-time Talmudic study (Brown, 2007). The primary tool for maintaining this social structure is the community’s school system (Perry-Hazan, 2013). Thus, the almost exclusive focus of Haredi schools for boys is the study of sacred texts (Perry-Hazan et al., 2023; State Comptroller, 2020). The ideal course of girls’ life is different: Girls are encouraged to combine SE and religious studies to facilitate their providing for their families when they grow up (Almog & Perry-Hazan, 2011).

The vast majority of Haredi schools are private, having a legal status of either recognised unofficial or exempt (Compulsory Schooling Act, 1949, Articles 1, 4). Most of these schools are affiliated with political parties. Haredi primary schools (Grades 1–8) are required to teach a core curriculum (Ministry of Education, 2011) comprising mathematics, Hebrew, English, social studies, nature, science, arts, physical education, history and geography. However, this requirement is not enforced (Perry-Hazan et al., 2023; State Comptroller, 2020). The most controversial subject is English (Perry-Hazan et al., 2023) due to its central role in opening the path for integration into higher education and employment.

Various efforts to impose curricular standards on Haredi boys’ schools, primarily by litigation, have been unsuccessful (Perry-Hazan, 2015a). One of their outcomes was that Haredi secondary schools for boys (Grades 9–11) were legally exempted from SE (Unique Cultural Educational Institutions Act, 2008). The State’s reluctance to enforce SE in Haredi schools relates to the political power of Haredi parties. For several decades, the largest parties needed to enlist the Haredi parties’ support to establish governing coalitions (see Leon, 2015).

The consequence of the curricular policies in Haredi boys’ schools is that graduates have only limited employment options. For this reason, many are disinclined to leave the yeshivas, which offer government stipends instead of work. These circumstances have a profound social and economic impact on Israeli society. The Haredi community currently comprises around 13% of the Israeli population, and approximately 19.5% of Israeli schoolgoers attend Haredi schools (Malach & Cahaner, 2022).

In 2013, the Israeli government initiated an innovative reform scheme allowing Haredi schools to change their status from unofficial private schools to official public schools and affiliate with a new public education stream––the National Haredi Education (NHE). NHE schools are owned and managed by the State and municipalities, whereas unofficial schools are owned and managed by private associations. The governmental decision that launched the NHE noted tersely that it ‘authorises the Minister of Education to examine the establishment of a national official (public) education for the Haredi population and act to amend the National Education Law’ (Government of Israel, 2013). However, this statement was not followed with further legislation or even internal MoE regulations. The government chose to refrain from anchoring this policy in the law to reduce resistance in the Haredi community (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019). These political motives resemble other cases of invisible policies (Jensen et al., 2018).

A previous study (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019) examined the initial stages of the NHE reform. It explored how Haredi schools legitimised the reform and the conditions that facilitated and hindered the ‘coincidence of wants’ between the schools and the MoE; this resulted in signed agreements that changed the schools’ status from private to public. These unpublished agreements included requirements related to the teaching of SE and teacher professionalisation. The current study examines how the reform was enacted over time and delves into the dynamics of change within NHE schools.

Enactment of ambiguous and invisible education policies

This study draws on the literature exploring the long trajectories of education policies, from the policy documents to the various political, administrative, judicial, and educational arenas in which the policies are enacted. Policy ‘enactment’ implies that policies are not simply implemented but are interpreted and translated by diverse policy actors in the school environment (Braun et al., 2010). It involves processes of interpretation and contextualisation (Braun et al., 2011), which depend on the policy actors’ worldview, expertise, experiences and interests (Bamber et al., 2019; Innes, 2022; Maguire et al., 2013). The actors make sense of the policy by utilising their previous organisation of knowledge and beliefs (Spillane et al., 2002). They engage in ‘appropriation’ of the policy by negotiating meaning across and within the various institutional and microinstitutional sites where policy flows and solidifies (Levinson et al., 2009).

Policy enactment is based on the premise that policies do not produce a uniform path for action but rather a range of alternatives (Braun et al., 2010). The form and extent of enactment are subject to whether a policy is mandated, strongly recommended, or merely suggested, as well as the degree to which particular policies ‘fit’ the ethos and culture of the school (Braun et al., 2011). It also depends on the level of ambiguity of the policy’s goals or means (Matland, 1995). Ambiguous education policy may be a consequence of several policy-related phenomena: vague instructions and ideas in policy documents (Graham et al., 2019), broad policy framework, allowing school leaders to exercise discretion (Shaked & Schechter, 2019), contradictions between policy documents (Maguire et al., 2013), or scattering the policy in various types of regulations rather than in a single coherent document (Bialik et al., 2018). Policy ambiguity is a tool to diminish conflict over the policies’ goals and means (Matland, 1995). Ambiguous education policies allow considerable room for interpretation, enabling implementing agents to enact the policy in different ways (e.g. Bialik et al., 2018; Graham et al., 2019; Maguire et al., 2013).

Whereas empirical research on enactment of ambiguous education policies is extensive (e.g. Bialik et al., 2018; Maguire et al., 2013; Shaked & Schechter, 2019), this study explores a policy that is not only ambiguous but also invisible: It does not derive from any official document. The study of invisible policies is scant and has yet to address education policy.

Based on Pierson’s (1994) arguments regarding the tactics employed by welfare states to decrease voters’ awareness of the negative influence of retrenchment policies, Jensen et al. (2018) conceptualised the term ‘invisible policy’. In their research on legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemployment protection in Britain, Denmark, Finland, and Germany, ‘invisible policy’ indicates ‘policy instruments that by design make it difficult for voters to evaluate the negative effect of a reform’, thus complicating the reconstruction of causal chains of responsibility that would allow voters to exact retribution (Jensen et al., 2018, p. 163; see also Jensen & Wenzelburger, 2021). Similar arguments regarding the political implications of invisible policies emerged from Mettler’s book (Mettler, 2011), which focused on policies regulating government social benefits in the United States. Mettler argued that federal policymakers used invisible policies to decrease the opposition of Americans hostile to public social services. Another study exploring invisible policy was conducted by Lawford (2016), who examined Canada’s evacuation policy for pregnant First Nations women living on reserves. Lawford provided three criteria to facilitate identifying invisible policies: the allocation of resources as an indication of government intentions, the material impact or consequences of the policy on its constituents, and the reactions of practitioners who respond to an aspect of the policy or are implementing a process.

Research design

This study explored the enactment of an invisible education policy that regulates religious enclave schools. The research field for the study included NHE boys’ primary schools (Grades 1–8) affiliated with mainstream Haredi groups that joined the NHE at least three years prior to the data collection. As we were interested in understanding the enactment of the reform, we chose to focus on mainstream Haredi schools rather than Haredi schools affiliated with modern groups whose approach to SE is more positive. For mainstream Haredi groups, being subject to mainstream Haredi rabbis’ edicts, joining the NHE was a critical decision that necessitated substantial change.

When we collected the data (2020–21), there were 60 NHE schools, 27 of which were boys’ schools. Of these 27 boys’ schools, 14 were affiliated with mainstream Haredi groups: Hasidic, Lithuanian, and Sephardic. Eleven of those schools had joined the NHE three years or more before the data collection began. Our sample included six schools in different geographical regions and Haredi group affiliations.

The research was based on qualitative methods, drawing on 22 semi-structured in-depth interviews and document analysis. The research population comprised five principals who manage NHE schools, 11 teachers who teach SE in these schools, and six MoE supervisors responsible for the inspection of NHE schools. All the interviewees were men, ranging in age from 32 to 63 (m = 45). Eighteen interviews were conducted in person, three by Zoom, and one by telephone. All the interviews were conducted by the first author. The supervisors provided us with information regarding schools that fit the research criteria. Most of the interviewees we approached agreed to participate in the research. Due to time constraints, two supervisors, one principal, and three teachers declined to participate. Scholars exploring the Haredi community often experience access barriers relating to their apprehensions of academia. In the current study, we did not encounter suspicion, as many of the potential participants knew the first author, a member of the Haredi community who had conducted a previous study on the NHE.

The interviews lasted around one hour on average and were recorded and transcribed. Interview questions dealt with the school’s implementation of the NHE reform; SE teaching (e.g. level of teaching, teaching materials, evaluation methods), the SE-related decision-making process; relationships between the schools, the MoE, and the municipalities; SE teachers’ professional development; and the interviewees’ personal worldview. In particular, we asked the interviewees to compare the schools’ practices before and after joining the NHE reform.

The ethical procedures were approved by the Institutional Review Board of our university (#422/18) and the Ministry of Education (#10898). The study ensured voluntary participation, informed consent, and confidentiality. To maintain the interviewees’ anonymity, we removed all identifiable details from this paper. Quotations ascribed to interviewees are identified by a letter indicating their role (P=principals, T=teachers, S=supervisor) and a serial number.

To triangulate the interview data, we collected monthly newsletters published by the MoE supervisors responsible for the NHE. The newsletters documented various programmes in NHE schools and included messages to the NHE staff. We analysed 45 newsletters published between April 2017 and June 2021, totalling 879 pages. The documents are cited by the prefix Doc. and a serial number.

The interviews and documents were analysed in several steps. During the first phase of analysis, we outlined general themes that emerged from the interviews. To increase the coding’s credibility, each author identified themes separately. Then, we discussed and compared the ideas and jointly formulated the initial coding scheme to capture the characteristics of the NHE reform’s enactment. We used Dedoose to analyse this coding scheme. At this stage, we turned to the literature on invisibility to better understand the initial identified themes. We drew on this literature to refine the coding scheme. The final coding scheme comprised different but interrelated levels of invisibility concerning organisational changes within the schools and the broader implications of the invisible policy’s enactment. During all rounds of analysis, disagreements were resolved by discussion to reach a consensus.

The authors’ different cultural backgrounds facilitated a critical evaluation of the cultural biases embedded in methodological decisions. The first author is a Haredi man who teaches in a Haredi school for boys and lectures in a religious teachers’ college. The second author is a secular Jewish woman who is a researcher at a multicultural university.

Findings

The Findings section includes two subsections, each addressing a different aspect of invisibility. The first subsection focuses on the visible and invisible changes that transpired within the schools following the NHE reform. The second subsection pertains to the broader implications of enacting an invisible policy.

Visible and invisible educational changes in NHE Schools

Whereas Haredi schools’ joining the NHE led to visible curricular changes, the scope of these changes was limited. The visible changes that encompassed all NHE schools related to teaching all required core subjects. A few schools taught some core subjects before joining the NHE, but the transition expanded the teaching hours devoted to them. ‘There is steady, substantial progress’, noted S1.

However, most of the examined schools did not change their practice of reducing SE hours in the eighth grade, which is common in Haredi private schools that limit SE in the seventh and eighth grades. This practice frees up time to prepare students for the rigorous religious studies in the small yeshivas (Haredi educational institutions for boys in Grades 9−11). Another retained practice in some schools was teaching SE only during afternoon hours when students are less able to concentrate.

NHE schools belonging to relatively conservative communities refrained from enacting visible changes that might create controversy with parents and community leaders. ‘Their DNA didn’t change … and they’re [doing the minimum] to satisfy the MoE’, asserted S4. He further noted that the changes in the NHE school curricula are influenced by ‘the worldview of the population, the community, and the school’. P8 described the communal pressures: ‘The NHE is constantly being tested by the community… Our parents are very anxious about this, so we need to be perceived as a school that doesn’t succumb to the MoE dictates’. T18 explained that some NHE schools ‘try to meet the expectations of both sides’ – the MoE and the Haredi leaders resisting the NHE – and, thus, do not teach secular studies before 1 pm. ‘It depends on the target audience’, S1 argued.

Changes that were mostly invisible to the school community and were not clearly related to the balance between religious and secular studies were easier to enact; thus, they were prevalent in all examined schools. A significant change invisible to the parents and the community was the professionalisation of teachers and teaching methods. One of the contractual conditions for joining the NHE was that all teachers would complete a BA and a teaching certificate in four years. Indeed, all the interviewed principals indicated that the teachers in their schools are close to completing their BAs, with some teachers applying to MA programmes. In addition, the MoE developed a multi-year professional development programme for SE teachers in NHE schools. T15, a mathematics teacher, declared that the MoE professional development courses in mathematics helped him ‘grow’. Similarly, T9 noted that the science courses ‘contributed’ to him ‘in ways that can’t be described’. Teacher professionalisation was not mentioned in the documents.

The MoE also provided the NHE schools with continuous mentoring from the supervisors and professional instructors. As several interviewees described:

P8: Since [we joined the NHE], the MoE instructors changed our teaching structure. We work seriously… with data, mapping, exams, and lesson planning.

P20: A good thing about the NHE is that you’re set up; you have a training model … You have an instructor for every subject… I sit down with the supervisor at the beginning of the year … I tell him about my ‘troubles’, and together … we set an action plan.

Several documents also mentioned the mentoring programmes (Docs. 12, 15, 20, 35).

Several interviewees emphasised that the NHE reform changed how they plan and deliver their lessons. They highlighted integrating various teaching practices in the same lesson and using experiments, games, and digital methods. The change in teaching practices was also manifested in several documents (Docs. 3, 4, 28, 44) that discussed project-based and research-based learning. Additionally, NHE schools subscribed to various extracurricular programmes offered by the MoE (Docs. 19, 21, 23–24, 28–31, 38, 44).

Another type of invisible change involved pupil assessment methods. The vast majority of private unofficial Haredi schools have refused to participate in national exams. In contrast, all NHE Haredi schools participate in these exams, adapted to the Haredi culture. The principals and teachers noted the importance of succeeding in the national exams. For instance, T15 asserted that he views the national exams as a ‘target’ because he wants to ‘show the general public that Haredi students can succeed and reach very high achievements’. NHE schools also began using internal assessments as a database for decision making. As some teachers explained:

T9: The mappings [of student mathematics achievements] were very helpful … it gives you a picture… Based on the mappings, we designed a work plan to focus on [specific] topics.

T7: This year, we’ll transfer everyone to [new language textbooks] … We discovered in fifth grade’s mapping that there are very, very large gaps relative to what [the MoE] requires.

Some of the enacted changes were mandated in the unpublished agreements the schools signed when they joined the NHE (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019). However, other changes stemmed from a mutual understanding that the NHE is subject to the same policies that apply to public schools.

The implications of the NHE policy’s invisibility in its enactment process

The noted visible and invisible changes emerged within a normative vacuum of an invisible policy that was not derived from any official policy text. Several features of enacting invisible education policy emerged from the data: the absence of institutional resources, a mismatch between the policy and the normative environment, and the implementing agents’ autonomy to initiate changes within their purview.

Institutional invisibility: lack of resources

The NHE reform’s invisibility had ramifications for the resources available to NHE schools. One of the schools’ major deficiencies was their lack of physical infrastructure. In Israel, municipalities are responsible for providing public schools with buildings and ongoing maintenance. As no regulations defined the public status of NHE schools, which would have compelled municipalities to provide NHE schools with physical infrastructures, four of the schools in our sample lacked adequate infrastructures. P8’s school rented a building whose structure does not match a school’s needs. T7, who works in the same school, noted that he ‘salutes the kids … 200 kids inside a rented apartment that was made over to a school’. ‘We should have received a building long ago, like any other [public] school’, he asserted. P13 noted that his school operates in a ‘prison cell’, a ‘junkyard’. He lamented that some families left the school due to its poor physical infrastructure. ‘If I had [an empty] room, even a tiny room, I would have built a lab’, he declared, ‘it was my dream’.

The interviewees lamented that the schools’ physical infrastructures are subject to the municipal officials’ political agenda. As S5 noted, ‘In some places, the municipality treats NHE schools as a part of the private Haredi education system’. P13 and P20 noted that their schools’ infrastructures rely on political relationships with the mayor.

Another resource unavailable to NHE schools due to the policy’s invisibility was professional teachers. Teachers who had already worked in NHE schools completed academic degrees and professional development courses, but no institutional plan exists for recruiting and training new SE Haredi teachers. The lack of professional teachers was mostly evident in English and Science. Concerning this drawback, P13 noted: ‘I want quality and professional teachers who are also Haredi! To bring such teachers to the schools, you have to pray 40 days at a [Rabbi’s] tomb’. Due to the lack of professional teachers, S4 noted that NHE schools were forced to compromise on ‘teachers who aren’t sufficiently qualified to teach SE’. In some cases, the schools did not teach core subjects in certain grade levels due to the lack of professional teachers.

Another manifestation of a paucity of resources related to teaching materials that require adaptation for Haredi boys’ schools. NHE schools are required to use textbooks authorised by the MoE, but textbooks accommodating Haredi culture are lacking. T16 noted that Haredi boys’ schools could not use textbooks written for Haredi girls due to inappropriate illustrations and content focusing on girls’ culture.

Invisible policy in an outdated normative environment

Another characteristic of enacting an invisible policy is the mismatch between the policy and the normative environment. As the original National Education Law (1953) was not amended to incorporate the NHE as an additional public school stream, the state has no legal obligation to open new NHE schools. When Haredi private schools agree to change their status, they can become NHE schools if they meet certain administrative conditions. However, it is unclear whether municipalities with large Haredi populations are mandated to open an NHE school, as in other public school streams.

The policy’s invisibility allowed the State and the municipalities to obstruct the establishment of new NHE schools, even if established schools requested to change their status. In some cases, the reasons are political. As P8 noted: ‘The Haredi [private] networks made deals with the Ministry of Education not to allow network schools to become [NHE]’. In other cases, while the municipalities did not resist the NHE, they simply did not acknowledge their obligations, as we noted in the previous section.

The lack of normative adaptations also proved to be a factor in regulating the curriculum. The MoE regulations determining a core curriculum for Haredi schools apply to private unofficial schools (Ministry of Education, 2011). As there are no written regulations concerning the NHE and in light of the lack of uniformity in the core curricula of the various public education streams in Israel, the NHE has adopted the curricula regulations obligating Haredi private unofficial schools. These regulations are thin and vague, resulting from political compromises (Perry-Hazan, 2015a). Thus, NHE schools can meet the MoE regulations without significantly changing some traditional practices. For example, the regulations authorise Haredi schools to replace certain SE subjects with others in the same ‘cluster’ (i.e. teach Hebrew instead of English in the language ‘cluster’). S1 criticised this provision, which allows the schools to teach only one English hour in each grade level, noting, ‘A sixth-grade child is still stuck in the ABCs, and it’s recognised as 100% core curriculum… This system is a “disaster”’. Similarly, S5 lamented that he ‘can do nothing [about it]’ when only one weekly hour of English qualifies as a full core curriculum. In addition, the MoE regulations enable Haredi schools to concentrate on SE in the seventh grade and avoid SE in the eighth grade, which prepares students for religious studies in the yeshivas. As noted, the interviewees revealed this visible practice to be common in NHE schools.

Implementing agents’ invisible ‘pockets of freedom’

Aside from the invisibility of the NHE policy hindering the reform, its ambiguity created a vacuum that interested agents gladly filled. Specifically, the normative vacuum provided the MoE officials in the Haredi district, the school principals, and the teachers ’pockets of freedom’ (Raaper, 2019) to initiate and enact changes within the unregulated spaces under their purview. During the first two years of the NHE reform, the MoE was willing to compromise on various administrative criteria to promote the reform, including the number of students needed for opening a new school and the teachers’ credentials. The lack of a written policy facilitated this flexibility. Later, this approach changed, primarily due to political circumstances that pushed the NHE down among the government’s priorities. However, the supervisors remained committed to enacting changes within their purview. S6 explained his focus on implementing feasible changes:

My agenda is not to ‘whine’ [about what’s missing]. I instruct the other supervisors: ‘We’re doing it! We’re number one! We’re leading the way!’… You can’t occupy yourself with frustrations: ‘I can’t and I can’t. Come on; you have dozens of [doable] actions here where you can succeed. So it’s true that there may be other things here that you can’t accomplish, but let’s focus on what you can do.

This excerpt exemplifies the MoE supervisors’ high motivation. We found similar motivation and commitment among the educators. For instance:

P17: When you learn something, you should learn it as best as possible.

T15: If you teach something, you should do it as best as possible … We don’t waste time here.

T21: If you do something, do it perfectly … all the way.

Some educators highlighted the importance they attribute to SE, parallel to the importance they ascribe to religious studies:

P10: Our approach towards secular studies is the same as religious studies. There’s no difference.

T7: The approach is that secular studies are unequivocally no less important than religious studies.

Israeli schools’ curricula are subject to policies formulated by MoE officials, and educators often complain that they lack autonomy (OECD, 2016). Thus, the unregulated space of the NHE enabled motivated educators to use their autonomy to maximise the quality of their SE teaching within its allocated time slot.

Discussion and conclusion

This study explored the enactment of an invisible education policy regulating religious enclave schools. The study drew on the case study of the NHE reform in Israel that was not anchored in any official text, focusing on Haredi boys’ schools that joined the NHE stream three years or more prior to the data collection. Invisible policies typically serve to silence those negatively affected by them or oppose them for other reasons (Jensen et al., 2018; Lawford, 2016). In the case of the NHE reform, the policy’s invisibility sought to circumvent resistance among Haredi groups who strive to preserve their educational autonomy, sanctify the exclusive focus on religious studies in boys’ schools, and nurture the traditional Haredi social structure in which men study Torah rather than work for their livelihood.

Although the NHE reform was anchored neither in national education laws nor in the MoE’s regulations, it influenced resource allocation, had a material impact on its constituents, and elicited reactions from practitioners who responded to the reform and were party to its implementation, thus conforming to Lawford’s (2016) criteria for identifying invisible policies. Our findings revealed that all the schools we explored enacted changes visible only to the school staff, including teacher professionalisation, improved teaching methods, and pupil assessment. However, the changes that were also visible to the wider school community, such as the class schedules distributed to the parents, were enacted differently in different schools.

Our findings also portrayed the consequences of enacting the invisible NHE reform. Among them was the lack of institutional resources available to NHE schools: physical infrastructure, subsidised training programmes for Haredi SE teachers, and adapted teaching materials. When an education policy is invisible, collaborations with various institutions (e.g. municipalities, teacher education colleges, and textbook publishers) become complex. The NHE was visible within the MoE, but the lack of formal policies hindered the NHE schools’ access to public resources that exceeded the MoE’s minimum.

Another consequence of the invisible NHE reform concerned the mismatch between the policy and its normative environment. As the original National Education Law (1953) was not amended to incorporate the NHE as an additional public school stream, there is no mandate to open new NHE schools. The invisibility of the policy allowed the State and the municipalities to hinder the establishment of new NHE schools, even when Haredi schools requested to change their status.

The lack of normative adaptations impacted curricula regulation as well. Given the absence of a written policy text regulating the NHE, and in light of the differences between the core curricula of the various public education streams in Israel, the NHE follows the vague and thin norms that regulate the curricula of Haredi private schools. These regulations enable NHE schools to meet legal requirements without having to change some of the schools’ traditional practices, such as teaching SE during afternoon hours or offering reduced SE in the eighth grade.

These latter characteristics hindered educational change in NHE schools due to a lack of institutional recognition. Education reforms require coordination between various agents and institutions, as educational changes do not occur in a linear, top-down process (Braun et al., 2010). Thus, MoE recognition and unpublished contractual agreements are insufficient to enact a policy. The multifaceted dimensions of education reforms require their high and clear visibility to all of the relevant agents.

A third characteristic of the invisible NHE reform relates to the implementing agents’ ‘pockets of freedom’ to promote changes in unregulated spaces (Raaper, 2019). During the first two years of the NHE reform, the MoE was willing to compromise on various administrative criteria to promote the reform. Later, this approach changed, primarily due to political circumstances that pushed the NHE down among the government’s priorities. However, the MoE supervisors and educators remained committed to enacting changes within their purview. The unregulated space of the NHE enabled motivated educators to use their autonomy to teach SE in the best possible way within SE’s allocated time slot. Thus, the invisible NHE policy provided the educators with a space that was relatively free of state policing and did not impose a sense of subordination. It encouraged the emergence of ‘policy entrepreneurs’, who identify with the policy’s ideals and recruit others to their cause (see Ball et al., 2011).

These conclusions reflect the inherent tensions between control and recognition characterising (in)visibility (Brighenti, 2007). On the one hand, visibility may expose individuals and organisations to surveillance, discipline, and policing. The panoptic gaze imposes a sense of subordination, which may impact behaviour (see Foucault, 1979). On the other hand, visibility may be associated with recognition, thus promoting respect and equality. Various studies have addressed the deprivation of recognition among invisible and disempowered minority groups (e.g. Taylor, 1992; Young, 2011). Thus, visibility is a double-edged sword: It can be empowering as well as disempowering (Brighenti, 2007).

In Israel, a common assumption was that invisible policies would prevent resistance in the Haredi community (Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2019). The NHE reform exemplifies the shortcomings of this approach. First, the delicate tension between the multiple implications of the NHE reform’s invisibility should be analysed in light of the specific context of a minority within a religious enclave community. A minority within a minority is often ignored by liberal states that promote multicultural policies and silence internal cultural negotiations (see Hills, 2018; Kymlicka, 1995; Panjwani, 2017). Some of the Haredi parties’ institutional resistance to the NHE reform may relate to how the NHE stream undermines the perception of the seeming uniformity of the Haredi community. The emergence of the NHE is an indication that this community is diverse (see also Katzir & Perry-Hazan, 2023b) and challenges the status of the Haredi parties as representing all Haredi groups.

Visibility is also necessary to enhance the legitimacy of the NHE in the Haredi community and in the public arena. Haredi parents need to know that the State is committed to NHE schools, that the NHE policy is stable, and that periodical political pressures in the national and municipal spheres cannot undermine it. The general public should be assured that the NHE is not manipulating the Haredi population to obtain additional public funds. Our findings indicate that an invisible policy might hinder visible changes and thus increase doubts relating to transparency and accountability. Without public support, there is a limited chance for large-scale change in the Haredi education system.

Finally, the invisibility of NHE policy perpetuates the State’s lack of strategic plans concerning the Haredi community and its education system. Such a plan should not only anchor the NHE in the law but also ease the bureaucratic barriers to establishing new schools, guarantee the development of adapted teaching materials, and subsidise SE teacher education programmes. It also requires targeted resources.

The limitation of this study is our focus on a single case study. Whereas this focus enabled a robust contextual inquiry, it constrained the generalisability of our conclusions. Future studies could examine invisible education policies in wider contexts and develop conceptualisations that differentiate between ambiguous and invisible education policies. We encourage education policy scholars to discern and analyse invisible policies concerning politically-sensitive issues. Invisible policies may be manifested not only due to the absence of an official policy text. They may also be concealed in complex designs that render the policy difficult to identify, evaluate, and critique (Jensen et al., 2018; Lawford, 2016; Mettler, 2011).

Concluding remarks

Our conclusions supplement the scant empirical literature on education reforms in religious enclave communities. Whereas the Israeli case study is embedded in a specific socio-political context, the complexity of enacting educational changes in Haredi and other religious enclave schools challenges policymakers in other counties as well (e.g. Bloch, 2022; Franken & Levrau, 2020; Parker-Jenkins et al., 2017; Shapiro & Rosenthal, 2022; Tan, 2010). In light of the failure of top-down reforms to enforce legal requirements in religious enclave schools, our conclusions reveal that the state may have a critical role in facilitating more educational choices for ultra-religious families. However, despite potential resistance, the state should not hesitate to assume this role visibly. An invisible education policy cannot replace law-based education reforms, even given the implementing agents’ exceptional motivation and commitment. Such policies may serve as short-term political solutions, but over time, their invisibility hinders their recognition and their ability to achieve their goals.

These ramifications might be irreversible. Upon completing this study, NHE policy was anchored in Ministry of Education regulations (2022) following 10 years of invisibility. The former Minister of Education signed the regulations during the last days of her term. However, in the current right-wing coalition that relies on the Haredi parties’ support, it seems that the policy window of the NHE is closing. The current government decided to allocate more funds to private Haredi schools, thus reducing Haredi schools’ pragmatic motives to join the NHE. This is yet another manifestation of how polarised politics serves conservative voices in the Haredi community and disempowers minority Haredi groups that desire more educational options for their children.

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to Benny Benjamin for his helpful comments, and for our interviewees for giving us their time.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to ethical restrictions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation under Grant 1487/19.

Notes on contributors

Shai Katzir

Shai Katzir completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Leadership and Policy in Education at the University of Haifa and is a graduate of Haredi yeshivas (rabbinic seminaries). He is a lecturer at Sha’anan Academic College and a pedagogical instructor at the Ahia Teacher College, which trains Haredi teachers. His Ph.D. proposal received the Baruch Wizen prize for innovative and creative research proposals.

Lotem Perry-Hazan

Lotem Perry-Hazan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Leadership and Policy in Education at the University of Haifa and a member of Israel Young Academy. She also serves as an editor of the journal, Critical Studies in Education. Her research interests focus on law and education policy in multicultural societies and on children’s rights in education.