Tamar Horowitz, Ben Gurion University of the Negev

Policies, Climate and Russian Community  Involvement in the  Integration of Russian

Children  in the   Educational System

Three  parameters explain the integration of Russian immigrant children in Israel:

Integration policies ,social climate in the Israeli society and the involvement of the Russian community.                                                                                                     

The paper tries to analyse three kinds of policies:governmental policies,local authority policies and school policies.Generally the governmental policies were

assimilative and monolinguistic,the local government  policies especially in communities where there were large number of immigrants, were more sensetive to immigrants social and cultural needs.As to school policies they varies from        integrationist policies to segregation policies.                                                                                        

Social climate was probed on two levels the general attitude of the Israeli public and the attitude of the immediate community

As to Russian  community involvement,since the mid 90s there is massive involvement of the Russian immigrants in the education of their children,first because of about 20% of school dropout of Russian childrn,second because of large number of immigrant teachers without jobs and third because of the political strength of the Russian community.This development resulted in the establishment of Russian schools network and involvment in extracuuricular activities in regular schools.