On September 1, nearly 1.5 million Israeli schoolchildren went back to school after two months of summer holidays.
In a country accustomed to annual teachers' strikes, the fact that 99 per cent of the Israel's 4,021 schools re-opened on time was described as a resounding success by Education Minister Yuli Tamir. But a closer look at what those children do at school leaves little room for celebration.
Almost one in four high school students - 22.3 per cent to be exact - receive special dispensations as a result of being diagnosed with learning disabilities. This number, the highest in the western world, would be terrifying if it had been a result of serious professional diagnoses. In reality, it is simply a testimony to the ease with which students and their parents can secure an officially recognised handicap, allowing them to take much easier matriculation exams with fewer questions and more time to answer them.
The absurdity of the situation is heightened by the fact that despite this, success rates are still dismally low. Only 45.9 per cent of Israeli students graduate from secondary school with a full matriculation certificate.
And it is not only by its own standards that the Israeli education system is failing. According to the triennial PISA tests, carried out by the OECD, Israeli students in 2006 ranked 39th in scientific literacy and 40th in reading and mathematics - far below the international average.
But these figures, many senior educators agree, are a symptom of much more fundamental problems which have plagued Israeli schools for decades.
Professor Yair Caro, president of Oranim Academy College of Education, says that "the way the matriculations exams have taken over the Israeli education system is a historic mistake. They have turned into the most important thing while the exams should be the result, not the purpose. When you study in a good educational system, you would anyway be able to pass such exams."
The real problem he argues - and others agree - are the wide gaps that have been allowed to appear within the system between the top tier of schools and the mediocre and bad schools. This gap is most pronounced on a geographical level.
Towns with stable upper-middle class communities, like Shoham (80.1 per cent), Ra'anana (72.7 per cent) and Herzliyah (70.8 per cent), achieve rates far above the national average. Big cities like Tel Aviv (65.8 per cent) and small kibbutzim like Ruchama (76.5 per cent) also hold their own.
But in areas with large underprivileged groups - such as Jerusalem (51.2 per cent) with large Charedi and Arab communities; development towns such as Kiryat Malachi (36.6 per cent); and Arab and Bedouin towns like Tel Sheva (38.5 per cent) - barely a third graduate with full matriculation.
"The equation is very simple," says former Education Minister Yossi Sarid, "the greater equality, the higher the level of achievement. Israel's schools do badly because there is such inequality."
Despite almost all schools - outside of the Charedi community - receiving state aid, not all receive the same level of funding. In affluent neighbourhoods, local councils allocate greater sums to their schools than do deficit ridden councils in poorer areas. These schools can also demand additional development costs from the parents - school fees by another name.
"Essentially, what has happened over the last few years is a privatisation of many of the schools," says Arieh Barnea, head teacher at the Be'er Tuviya regional high school. "That means that instead of trying to carry out an educational vision, head teachers are much too busy trying to satisfy parents' demands, because the parental support is what the school needs in order to prosper.
"That doesn't mean a parent always knows what's best for their child. One father wanted to know why we only provided five weekly hours of mathematics and demanded more. I simply could not try and explain to him that there are other subjects we would like to teach."
The lack of funds ties into another weakness of the Israeli system: the disastrously low wages of teachers - NIS 5,500 (£865) on average each month - well below the median Israeli wage of NIS 7,900 (£1,245).
With pay like that, teaching has become the profession of choice for the many with few qualifications, or for the few with very high motivation.
Ronen Sela, 36, who teaches mathematics in the Metrowest High School in Ra'anana, says that the only thing that made him swap a monthly high-tech sector salary of NIS 35,000 (£5,510) for NIS 5,000 (£790) was "that I simply love to get up in the morning, go to school, stand in front of a classroom full of students, and teach.
"I can also teach after-school afternoon classes, and I end up with a reasonable income. But for a person like me, who loves teaching and enjoys the time spent with the students, the personal gain is so high that I'm still convinced that I made the right move."
But ideological motivation is not enough for many others. There is a turnover of between 5,000 and 7,000 teachers each year, with over 30 per cent of new teachers leaving the profession after their first year.
"It doesn't even matter how much you love teaching," says Erez Levkovich, who teaches philosophy and Judaism at the Democratic School in Givat Olga. "In so many classrooms, the teacher has been reduced to a babysitter by the system, with parents focused on the curriculum and the tests, instead of what the child really needs."
Demoralisation is especially acute in the Arab Israeli sector where there is a combination of poor infrastructure and fewer resources. Their relatively highly-qualified teaching force suffers from low motivation since many went into the profession only because other jobs were closed to them.
Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa Centre, the Advocacy Centre for Arab Citizens in Israel, emphasised: "These factors result in a student dropout rate in the Arabic education system, which is double that of the national average, and a disproportionately low number of university students."
"The social gaps in the system, the growing privatisation and the teacher's pay are Israel's main problems," says Dr Dan Gibton, an expert on educational management and reform at Tel Aviv University. "But at the same time, Israel has two very major achievements. We have the second highest student retention rate, with very low dropout numbers, and no country has a higher percentage of students who go on to higher education.
"In European countries - where the quality of teaching is higher, children score highly in the international exams and teachers are paid much more - a relatively small proportion continue to university.
"The challenge of building a system with high inclusiveness, which at the same time will be of high quality, is something that many countries have not succeeded at, least of all Israel with all its other problems."
Do the maths
40th - Where Israel ranks internationally in reading and mathematics skills
54.1% - Percentage of students who do not leave school with a full matriculation certificate
£865 - (NIS 5,500) Average monthly wage paid to Israeli teachers - far below the national average
30+% - Percentage of teachers who leave the profession after their first year
...And the charedim who opt out
There is one sector of Israeli education that functions, to a large degree, outside the system. About 250,00 children study in Charedi schools and do not take the matriculation exams necessary for going on to higher education.
These children study in a wide range of education streams: state-funded, semi-private, and even some that are not recognised by the state at all. Demographic trends suggest that by 2011, every sixth child in Israel will study in a Charedi school.
The majority attend schools that belong to the Hinuch Atzmai stream - affiliated to the United Torah Judaism party - or to Maayan Hinuch Torani, affiliated to Shas.
These schools are committed to teaching the government's core curriculum and therefore receive full state funding. Other charedi schools, which do not teach core subjects, receive between 50 and 70 per cent state funding and a minority of Charedi schools prefer to rely solely on fundraising and do not even register the students with the Education Ministry.
Politicians and Education Ministry officials have long claimed that state funding for the Charedi schools is a result of the political influence of Shas and UTJ, since there is little state supervision in their schools and their teaching of the core subjects is minimal and nowhere near the level at which they are taught in state schools.