A week into the school year: what the CBS data actually says about education in the community — including one number that is quoted backwards

What this is about

The most recent official publication on education in the community is press release 367/2025 of the Central Bureau of Statistics, "The Ethiopian Population in Israel — a selection of data for the Sigd festival 2025," published on November 16, 2025. It is not a new publication, and it is the most current one there is. We read the file in full.

The school year opened a week ago. This is a good moment to know what it actually says.

The number that gets quoted backwards

The publication contains this line: "the share continuing to bachelor's studies at academic colleges among Ethiopian-Israelis was significantly higher than the share among all pupils in Hebrew education (57.7% against 39.1%, respectively)."

That line is not infrequently quoted as though it means that 57.7% of Ethiopian-Israeli high-school leavers go on to a bachelor's degree. It does not say that.

It says: among those who had already gone on to a bachelor's degree, 57.7% studied at academic colleges — against 39.1% among the continuers in Hebrew education as a whole. It is a breakdown of institution type within the group of continuers, not a continuation rate.

The continuation rate itself appears on the same page, and it is something else entirely:

> Only 23.2% of Ethiopian-origin high-school leavers went on to bachelor's studies within 8 years of finishing high school, against 48.1% of all high-school leavers in Hebrew education.

(The tracking follows the 2015/16 cohort through to 2023/24.) Among the continuers, the share studying at universities was 24.0% against 37.4%.

That is the difference between "most of those who continue go to a college" and "most people continue." The first is true. The second is not.

Matriculation — the gap is real, and the trend is rising

In the 2023/24 school year, 2,300 Ethiopian-origin twelfth-graders sat matriculation exams.

Measure	Ethiopian-Israelis	All Hebrew education
Share sitting matriculation exams	93.7%	95.1%
Matriculation certificate eligibility	76.2%	85.4%
Matriculation meeting university threshold requirements	57.0%	76.1%

The gap in the third row is the one that determines who can even apply to a university. The threshold requirements include, beyond eligibility, a passing grade at the level of 3 units in mathematics and 4 units in English.

The CBS notes that this share has been on a rising trend in recent years. That is not a marginal detail.

Two further breakdowns from the publication:

Supervision: among Ethiopian-Israelis studying in religious-education institutions, matriculation eligibility reached 79.0% against 74.3% in general supervision; those meeting the threshold requirements — 62.2% against 53.4%.
Generation: the second generation (Israeli-born with Ethiopia-born fathers) made up 70.1% of Ethiopian-origin twelfth-graders. Eligibility among them was 78.2% against 71.5% among the Ethiopia-born; meeting the threshold requirements — 60.7% against 47.9%.

Who is sitting in the classroom

34.3 thousand pupils of Ethiopian origin in primary and secondary education in 2023/24 — about 2.2% of all pupils in Hebrew education.
13.5% of them were born in Ethiopia — against 37.3% a decade earlier. Today's classroom is mostly a classroom of Israeli-born pupils.
Supervision: state 50.4% (up from 46.5%), state-religious 42.9% (down from 50.0%), Haredi 6.6% (up from 3.6%).

Technological education — a gap of 11.5 percentage points

Among Ethiopian-origin upper-secondary pupils, 46.4% studied in technological/vocational education — against 34.9% among Hebrew-education pupils not of Ethiopian origin.

And in the Ministry of Labour's vocational training: in 2024, 986 pupils of Ethiopian origin began courses, 2.3% of all trainees that year. 60.6% of them were born in Ethiopia. The prominent training branches: transport (31.2%), electricity and climate control (21.4%), and management, marketing and finance (12.6%) — which are also the three prominent fields in the population as a whole.

In academia

In 2024/25, 4,151 Ethiopian-Israeli students were studying for an academic degree (including 534 for a bachelor's at the Open University) — 1.4% of all students, as in the previous year. The number has barely moved: 4,144 the year before.

The breakdown by institution type is stark: 1 in every 35 students at non-budgeted academic colleges was of Ethiopian origin, against 1 in 90 at other institution types and 1 in 125 at universities.

By field: the highest shares were in business and management sciences and in the health professions; the lowest in the exact sciences. In STEM subjects, a third of Jews and others not of Ethiopian origin were studying — twice the rate among Ethiopian-Israelis.

This is precisely the gap the Marom scholarship is trying to move, through the prioritization of fields of study and priority levels.

What is not in this publication

The publication contains no chapter on wages or employment. For anyone looking for those figures — the Knesset Research and Information Center's August 2025 review is the place.