The Israel Bi-Literacy Initiative
Teaching Israel’s children to read in Hebrew and English — together, from the very beginning.
Why it matters
Israel's reading scores are falling. In PIRLS 2021, Israel scored 510 — a 20-point fall against a global average decline of 8, leaving it 30th among OECD countries. Among Hebrew-speaking students, the drop was 28 points. The share of children reading at a high level fell by 11%; the share reading at a low level rose by 8%. Israel's Education Ministry put it plainly: reading has returned to where it stood in 2001.
None of that is because Hebrew is hard to read. Pointed Hebrew is one of the most transparent writing systems in the world — the vowel points make sound-to-symbol correspondence almost perfectly regular, far more consistent than English.
This is a method problem, not a language problem.
Israeli schools don't begin teaching children to read English until third grade. Yet English is economic infrastructure in Israel: in 2025, high-tech accounted for 18.3% of GDP and 58% of all exports. In wealthier communities, families fill the gap with private tutors and enrichment programs. In the periphery, most families can't, so their children fall furthest behind. It doesn't have to be this way. Research shows that young children can start reading in English early without hurting their Hebrew. Phonological awareness and decoding transfer between languages, so reading skills built in one language can help build skills in the other. Reading in Hebrew makes English easier, and reading in English strengthens Hebrew. The two languages support each other. They don't compete.
Figures from PIRLS 2021, published by the IEA in May 2023. Hebrew-speaker and achievement-band figures via Ynet; OECD ranking via The Jerusalem Post. Economic figures from the Israel Innovation Authority's 2026 State of High-Tech report. On cross-linguistic transfer: Melby-Lervåg & Lervåg (2011), Journal of Research in Reading 34(1), 114–135.
A pilot in Yerucham
In spring 2026, first graders in a Yerucham elementary school began reading English two years earlier than Israeli schools normally do. In a short pilot, during a war, every child showed growth, and some began reading independently.
They are six-year-olds in a development town in the desert. Most had never seen an English letter. Their teachers had never taught reading this way before, and they learned the method while the country was at war. Within weeks, the children were sounding out words in a language the system says they should not meet until third grade.
That is the whole idea, and it is why we are not waiting. Every year a child spends waiting is a year spent behind.
The First Week: Kids Ran It Themselves
First-Graders started to read CVC words in just Two Months
Supporting all Students: Strong, Average, and Struggling
Benefits of teaching reading and speaking at the same time
Life After the Pilot: Bringing CAPIT to More Grades
Why the Negev
The Negev holds the widest range of circumstances in Israel — Bedouin, Arab, Gaza-envelope, and Jewish schools across the resource spectrum — at a scale small enough to work with closely. From kibbutz schools to some of the most under-resourced Bedouin communities in the country.
Yerucham | Ramat Negev | Meitar | Tel Sheva | Neve Midbar
We work there with MindCET, an Israeli educational innovation organization based in the Negev, born out of CET. MindCET recruits the schools and is our partner on the ground; its Negev EduLAB is built to run exactly this kind of matched-school, field-measured initiative.