Israel ranks low in education funding ynet news .com Moran Zelikovich Published: 09.18.07, 21:50 / <http://www.ynetnews.com/home/0,7340,L-3082,00.html> Israel News OECD report reveals Jewish state's investment in education systems lowest amongst developed nations Israel's investment in its students is one of the lowest amongst the worlds developed countries, according to a <http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/4/55/39313286.pdf> report published Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Data presented in the OECD report showed that <javascript:var%20x=txt_link(> Israel invests $4,278 per student annually, in contrast to the United States, which spends $7,896 per student each year. The government's investment in public education has been decreasing throughout the past decade, and now comprises 76.4% of public education funding. The report, titled Education at a Glance 2007, assesses the state of education systems in developed countries each year. This year's report placed Israel's education system low on the list with regards to the number of hours dedicated to reading, writing, literature, and languages. However, Israeli students spend more time on mathematics than their counterparts in Japan, Korea, Russia, and France among others. The report revealed disturbing statistics regarding the government's support of higher education institutions in Israel; government spending on higher education continues to decrease each year, forcing institutions to rely on private sources to fund them. As a result, the proportion of private funding in Israel's higher education institutions is one of the highest among the countries included in the report. The report's findings suggest that Israel could find itself struggling to catch up with other developed countries if the government's policies regarding the funding of higher education institutions are not changed. According to the report, Israel ranked second to last with regards to the amount of government money spent on higher education in relation to its number of students, population, and gross national product. Greece ranked last.