The inability of the broader public to access professional psychological help is costing the State of Israel between 51 and 61 billion shekels, and the broader management of the Psychological Educational Service (PES) is alarmingly lacking, especially considering the accruing traumas from the Israel-Hamas War, the State Comptroller’s Office revealed in a comprehensive annual report on local governance on Tuesday.
A previous State Comptroller report, which gathered information from June 2023 to November 2024, examined the state of local PES authorities during the years 2019-2023, during standard times, and also from 2023 to 2024 – in a state of emergency.
The report investigated seven local authorities for the pre-war period: the cities of Ashkelon, Tiberias, Taiba, Lod, and Netanya, as well as the Eshkol and the Mateh Asher Regional Councils.
For the wartime period, five local authorities were examined: the city of Ashkelon and the Eshkol and the Mateh Asher Regional Councils, which were evacuated due to attack threats, as well as Tiberias and Netanya. Some areas surrounding Mateh Asher were also included in the study.
The State Comptroller examined PES human resources, the recognition of PES as critical for educational psychology, the prevention of sexual offenders from being employed in such places, and the work of PES itself – particularly concerning how it handles operations with local authorities and the Education Ministry.
For the report, two surveys were circulated by the State Comptroller’s Office in the Fall of 2023 to examine the challenges staff are facing. One survey was sent to parents (891) of children aged three-to-18, and the other to PES managers.
The State Comptroller found that 61.4% of parents of children with difficulties did not approach PES after their child exhibited mental health symptoms, though 72% of parents of children aged three-to-18 reported noticing such symptoms.
The number of parents who did turn to PES dropped 57%. The main reason (44.6%) was that they were not even aware of the service; this applied to 30% of Jewish-Israeli parents, 62% of Arab-Israeli parents, and 54% of haredi (ultra-Orthodox) parents.
This outweighed the other reasons parents did not turn to PES: failure by the educational institution to refer them (18%), and long wait period – about 54 days for PES, 89 days at public health clinics, and 36 days through private psychological care – and lack of availability (12.5%). This was particularly pertinent in low-income communities.
The Education Ministry allocates psychologist posts to local authorities based on a ratio system of the number of students in each authority. In December 2023, there were 3,343 posts, but by December 2024, they dropped to 2,429.
“Even though the Education Ministry had been aware since 2010 of the gaps between what exists in terms of PES posts and what is needed, and especially with the consistently growing need for such services over the past few years, the ministry has not updated its ratio plan in 35 years,” reads the report.
THE CURRENT ratio is one post per 500 children in kindergartens and day cares (ages three to six) and first grade; one post per 1,000 students in grades two-through-12, and one post per 300 students with disabilities.
When the ministry looked into changes to this ratio plan in 2018 by examining only two local authorities, it decided to make no changes. “This was due to the lack of psychologists in PES, and that reason remained true,” reads the report.
The State Comptroller did find, however, that in educational institutions for ages five-through-15, 91% of PES posts had been filled.
Treatments for suicide prevention jumped by 43% during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 2020 to 2021. There was also a rise of 122% of interventions.
The State Comptroller found that in educational institutions where students with disabilities study with regular students, the factored change in ratio was not taken into account, such that the ratio plan is inaccurate. The larger database is also misguided and outdated.
In 2023, 12 psychologists designated for PES or in managerial roles did not have the required qualifications, and the Education Ministry did not properly track their progress.
Regarding preventing sex offenders from getting these positions, the municipalities of Ashkelon, Tiberias, Taiba, Lod, and Netanya received approvals to dismiss only nine out of 28 male psychologists who were hired to PES between 2019 and 2023.
For others, many of the approvals were granted only years after these individuals were already working, sometimes up to a decade. Tiberias and Taiba, in particular, failed to receive police approval to hire.
Taiba later procured approvals for most of the psychologists, but this was years after they were already working.
In Lod, there was not a single approval between 2019 and 2023; some of the psychologists even finished their work before the approval could come through, while for others, the municipality received a police report indicating a lack of a criminal record, but “that does not serve as a replacement,” the report reads.
As a whole, these municipalities and councils failed to adopt an Education Ministry work plan that was set out to ensure effectiveness.
The State Comptroller also found that the physical conditions of PES offices were far less than adequate, even dangerous at times; they are also not close or accessible enough to bomb shelters. The Education Ministry did not provide guidelines to remedy this.
The effects of the war
After the Israel-Hamas War began in October 2023, the Education Ministry tracked data on psychologists working at absorption centers for evacuees for only two months, despite the fact that the number of evacuees was only increasing.
Separately, between October 2023 and January 2024, 53% of students in grades seven-to-12 in the locations surveyed by the State Comptroller reported daily psychosomatic symptoms.
The Education Ministry did expand PES during the war, but only a few localities used it, and the ministry did not follow up on this. The PES managers were only able to expand their operations three months after the war began. Moreover, the ministry’s guidelines on coordination between PES workers were only published eight weeks after the war broke out.
The ministry also did not specify or offer any recommendations on how it would help the psychologists themselves deal with the trauma garnered from their work.
Alternatively, it did organize support group meetings and guidance in the first month of the war for three of the PES managers in the Gaza border area.
The ministry also offered remote lectures to PES staff nationwide on the situation as early as October 8, 2023, totaling 24 lectures over three months in which 4,593 psychologists participated.
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman advised that the Education Ministry match itself to the needs on the ground, setting standards for the work conditions – particularly regarding databases and services that synchronize – in order to present a realistic assessment of what the status is with PES.
He also recommended that the ministry and local authorities work harder to ensure that patients’ private details remain discreet, and that local authorities work to increase the personnel, making sure that they are approved by the police to work in these posts.
“Thirty-five years ago, the Education Ministry designated the ratio of one psychologist for 1,000 students, ranging from Grade Two to 12. This means that the average wait time for a meeting is 55 days, which is absolutely unacceptable. The ministry must adjust its allocations to meet what is actually needed on the ground,” Englman said.