School Based Management in Bedouin Schools in Israel

School-Based Management (SBM) schools enjoy flexibility in resource utilisation and their success largely depends on their context's directives and characteristics. In 1995, Israel's Education Ministry transferred nine Jewish schools to SBM. Three years later, the ministry instructed the five Bedouin schools in Rahat to become SBM. The Bedouins are the first Israeli minority to adopt SBM in their schools. This research study will describe, study and assess the extent of SBM's implementation in the five Rahat schools, discussing the unique context, which studies on this subject have so far excluded. The context is unique because it is complex: the political relationship between majority (Jews) and minority (Arabs), the confrontation between a traditional, conservative society (Bedouin) and a modem, continually changing one (Israeli), and the Arab school system's total separation from the Jewish one. The study's target population consisted of the five coeducational primary schools' 179 teachers and five principals. Two approaches were used to analyse the findings: positivist-quantitative and phenomenological-qualitative, and two different tools to assess SBM in the five schools. The first tool, a questionnaire, was sent to the teachers and principals, who graded answers 1 to 5, while the second was a semi-structured interview with the five principals and with randomly selected 20 teachers (four from each school).The results of SBM's pilot application in Israel's Bedouin community were opposite to what the Ministry of Education anticipated. The main factors that prevented the five schools from implementing SBM and increased centralisation included extensive intervention in school affairs by the Education Ministry and the local tribe, especially its leader (sheikh), and Bedouin society's conservativism. Instead of implementing SBM, Bedouin schools should improve teacher training, upgrade the physical infrastructure, neutralise tribal influence, and use innovative teaching methods.