Background
Students in mainstream education , who experience difficulties that affect their examination performance, sometimes struggle to adequately demonstrate in examinations the knowledge they have acquired. This group includes, students with learning disabilities, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or medical conditions, as well as special education students, and students experiencing emotional or psychological difficulties. These students are granted testing accommodations – modifications to standard examination conditions – intended to reduce disparities, remove barriers, and address difficulties that impair a student’s ability to demonstrate acquired knowledge, without compromising the standard of the matriculation examinations.
Testing accommodations include, inter alia, extended examination time, oral reading of examination questions, enlarged-font examination papers, disregarding spelling errors, typing answers on a computer, and reducing the number of examination questions.
Approximately 56% of students who completed their studies in the 2024–2025 school year and who sat for at least one matriculation examination were eligible for at least one testing accommodation (approximately 73,000 out of 131,000 examinees).
The extension of examination time in matriculation examinations by 25% beyond the originally allocated time is an accommodation granted to students who have difficulty expressing their knowledge within the examination’s prescribed timeframe. Extended time is the most common accommodation granted to students in the education system in recent years (approximately 52% of students who completed their studies in the 2024–2025 school year and sat for at least one matriculation examination were eligible for this accommodation).
The overwhelming majority of students who were eligible for extended time accommodations in the 2024–2025 school year – approximately 92% (approximately 63,000 students in total) – received such eligibility from a school-based committee at the school they attended, on the basis of learning disabilities, attention disorders, medically related learning difficulties, or emotional or psychological difficulties affecting learning (extended time accommodation). In addition, certain groups of students are entitled to extended time automatically, without school discretion, including new immigrants and students who are returning residents.
In the 2014–2015 school year, the Ministry of Education abolished the requirement that students present a professional assessment to the school in order to obtain eligibility for extended time accommodations. Accordingly, as of the date of the audit, decisions of school-based committees are required to rely on teachers’ opinions, on examples of the student’s examination performance, and on an assessment of the necessity of the accommodation, with the school itself ultimately determining eligibility, without the need for a professional assessment.
It should be noted that a comparison with other countries found that, similarly to Israel, extended time accommodations in the education systems of the countries examined – England, Australia (Victoria), and New Zealand – are granted for a variety of reasons: learning disorders and medical, emotional, or psychological conditions. However, unlike the situation in Israel, the authority approving extended time accommodations in those countries is external to the school.
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