IPS) feature

Israel systematically discriminates against Palestinian children in its public schools, a leading US-based rights group said Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch, in a 187-page report, said that, compared to Jews, Arab children are offered fewer and less well-staffed facilities and must travel farther to attend school because of government policies designed to encourage Palestinians to move out of certain areas.

The report, 'Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel's Schools' , concluded that Palestinian schools are ''a world apart in quality from the public schools serving Israel's majority Jewish population".

While Palestinian children constitute almost 25 percent of Israel's school-aged children, they made-up less than six percent of all students receiving their first university degree in 1999, according to the report.

''In virtually every respect, Palestinian Arab children get education inferior to that of Jewish children, and their relatively poor performance in school reflects this,'' said Zama Coursen-Neff, counsel to HRW's Children's Rights Division, which sponsored the year-long study.

''Discrimination is cumulative, and at each level, more Palestinian Arab children are winnowed out,'' she added.

Palestinian Arabs make up roughly 19 percent of Israel's population. About 80 percent of Palestinian Arabs are Muslim, about one-tenth Christian, and most of the rest are from Druze communities.

The Israeli government operates two school systems, one for Jewish children, and one for Palestinian Arabs.

''Discrimination against Palestinian Arab children colours every aspect of the two systems,'' according to the report, which noted that the Education Ministry itself has long acknowledged it spends less money per student in the Arab system.

''The gap is enormous - on every criterion measured by Israeli authorities,'' the report said.

This disparity alone violates international law, which recognises a right to education for all children. The Convention against Discrimination in Education, to which 90 countries are parties and which Israel ratified 40 years ago, requires that if Israel maintains separate systems for Jews and Palestinian Arabs, they must provide the same standard of education.

Palestinian schools, according to the report, invariably offer larger classes and fewer teachers and often lack basic learning facilities, such as libraries, computers, science labs, and even recreation areas.

While Jewish schools frequently offer enrichment facilities, such as film studios and theatre rooms, none of the dozen or so Arab schools visited by HRW during its study had anything comparable.

Many Arab communities also lack schools for three and four-year-old children, which are mandated under Israeli law. Kindergartens for Arab children throughout much of the country, particularly in the Negev Desert where Bedouin Arabs are concentrated, are inadequate.

As a result, children denied access to pre-kindergarten classes do less well in kindergarten; those who passed through inadequate kindergartens do less well in primary school.

Facilities and training for teachers in the Arab school system also falls far short of what is available for their counterparts in Jewish schools. Palestinian teachers are generally less qualified and receive lower salaries.

In the area of special education - for children with learning or psychological disabilities - the differences are particularly stark, according to the report. In many cases, special education schools in the Arab system lack trained professionals, such as psychologists and speech therapists. The schools themselves are widely dispersed, leading some Arab parents to keep their disabled children at home.

The curriculum for Arab students also leaves much to be desired, according to the report. Most curricula are simply translated from the Hebrew, while the government makes limited efforts to provide materials that might be of particular interest to Palestinian children, such as literature by Palestinian writers or texts on Palestinian history.

As a result, the curricula's content often alienates both Arab students and their teachers. This is compounded by mandatory subjects on Jewish religion, which are covered in the bagrut - the matriculation exams given to all students who wish to apply for admission to university at the end of high school.

All of these factors result in a dropout rate among Palestinian students that is three times the rate of their Jewish colleagues. In addition, Palestinian children consistently score lower in national exams including the bagrut .

Israeli education officials have argued that these gaps may be due to cultural and economic factors, but HRW dismissed that contention.

"Discrimination in education is cyclical and cumulative,'' said the report. ''When one generation has fewer educational opportunities of poorer quality, their children grow up in families with lower incomes and learn from less well-educated teachers.''

Since 1991, when the education ministry reported that the government invests in the schooling of Palestinian children only about 60 percent what it spends on Jewish students, the government has promised to help make up the gap with lump sums of money. But it has failed to follow through, according to HRW.

The report noted instances of outright racism on the part of top education officials. The head of the school system for Bedouin children once described their parents as ''blood-thirsty Bedouins who commit polygamy, have 30 children and continue to expand their illegal settlements, taking over state land.''