
Teacher salaries in Israel: What you need to know
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Kindergarten teacher salaries in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip are significantly higher than the average Israeli salary.
The annual average salary of a kindergarten teacher is $200,000, according to the most recent data published by the Israeli Higher Education Authority.
That is slightly more than the $210,000 average salary for a teacher in Israel, according the World Bank.
But that is far below the Israeli government’s official target of $400,000 per year for kindergarten teachers.
The median salary in the West Bank is $1,000.
In the Gaza Strip, the average salary is $175,000 and the figure is $70,000 for teachers in Gaza.
In recent years, Israel has been attempting to bring back some semblance of a salary freeze by implementing a new policy that will allow kindergarten teachers to receive only up to 10 percent of their salaries from the state.
However, it is a policy that has failed to convince parents, teachers and even the Israeli Defense Forces, which have long complained that the current system has not been working.
Last week, Israel’s Education Ministry announced that the 10 percent salary cap would be lifted on July 1.
However since then, there has been no progress in bringing back the freeze, with many parents and teachers still holding out hope that the plan will be rolled back.
While it may seem like a minor victory, the move has been met with a great deal of resistance from teachers and their unions.
The teachers union, the Central Committee of the Israeli Knesset (Knesset) said that the policy will put their union at a disadvantage in the future.
“Our union will continue to fight to raise the salary cap until we receive full compensation, and we will never agree to an increase that will put us at a competitive disadvantage,” the union said in a statement.
“The government should be paying its teachers a living wage, not a salary cap, and this will only help to keep them in the workforce,” said the union’s education spokesman, Rami Barghouti.
The Teachers Union of the West (TUV) is one of the largest teachers unions in Israel and represents over 50,000 kindergarten teachers in the country.
TUV called on the government to immediately lift the 10% cap.
“We will not allow this government to keep on increasing the salaries of teachers until the salaries for kindergarten graduates increase,” said TUV head Tanya Dror.