At a hearing held at the High Court of Justice last Monday, a concerning picture emerged regarding the management of the Ministry of Education's pilot program to replace medical aides with school nurses. The Ministry of Education admitted during the hearing that it does not possess an organized database including the number of children suffering from allergies, the volume of allergic reactions that occurred in educational institutions, or the number of times urgent medical evacuation of students was required following exposure to an allergen.
The information was revealed during a petition filed by Adv. Gilad Bar Tal on behalf of the Yahal Association, against the pilot currently operating in ten schools since the start of the current school year. The petitioners seek to halt the move to remove medical aides from first and second-grade classrooms and replace them with a school nurse response. According to the Yahal Association, the state presents the pilot as a move accompanied by a professional research process, while in reality, no such research has begun, and only a tender to identify an academic body to perform it in the future is underway.
The practical implication, as argued during the hearing, is that the model's implementation began before any research infrastructure exists to assess its safety or efficacy. During the hearing, the petitioners raised significant questions regarding the manner of response to emergencies in real-time. Parent representatives wondered how the educational staff should act the moment a child develops a reaction, what is the precise time required to summon a nurse, and how long it will take to reach appropriate medical treatment.
In addition, the petitioners raised sharp criticism regarding the position of the Association of Allergologists, claiming it does not give sufficient weight to the mental and psychological aspects of young children suffering from life-threatening allergies. According to them, safety cannot be measured solely based on extreme cases of mortality or severe medical events. The association emphasized that their objection is not to the change itself, but to the unilateral manner of implementation, without clear data and without predefined success metrics.
In the view of the parents, children should not be subjects for research with unknown results, especially when their lives and physical and mental health are at stake. As of now, the Ministry of Education stands by its position that the new model is appropriate and safe to operate, despite the explicit lack of data presented in court.