Education Ministry Admits It Lacks School Allergy Data as Court Weighs Medical Aide Pilot

Israel's Education Ministry told the High Court of Justice on Monday that it does not have data on how many children in the education system have allergies, how many allergic reactions have occurred in schools, or how many evacuations have followed such incidents.

The admission came during a hearing on a petition filed by attorney Gilad Bar Tal, legal adviser to the Yahal Association, against what the group describes as an experiment on children with allergies.

The program, first reported by Walla, seeks to remove medical aides from first- and second-grade classrooms and replace them with support provided by school nurses. It began at the start of the current school year in 10 schools.

Parents and the Yahal Association petitioned against the move. According to the association, the Education Ministry continues to argue that the new model is appropriate and safe to implement despite the lack of available data.

During the hearing, Bar Tal presented the petitioners' arguments, saying that key questions about handling allergic emergencies in real time remain unanswered. These include how school staff will respond when a child develops a reaction, how the nurse will be alerted, and how much time will pass before emergency treatment is provided.

“The fear of accidental contact with allergenic foods often leads to persistent anxiety and significantly affects the quality of life of both children and their families.” — Rambam Health Care Campus

The association also argued that the state has presented the pilot as a move accompanied by a professional research process, but that such research has not yet begun. According to the petitioners, a tender is currently underway to select an academic body that will conduct the research at a later stage. The parents argued that this means the model was launched before a research framework was established that would allow its effectiveness and potential consequences to be measured.

The petitioners' representatives also criticized the stance taken by the Association of Allergologists at the hearing. Yahal argued that the allergologists' position does not give sufficient consideration to the emotional and psychological effects of life-threatening allergies on young children, and that the safety of the model cannot be assessed solely based on cases of death or severe medical incidents.

“We do not live according to statistics; we deal with reality,” the association said following the hearing. “In addition to the fear of an attack that could cause irreversible damage, even a ‘mild’ reaction is still an allergic attack. The children's sense of security is also important, and at the age of 6 and 7, the solution of a school nurse is simply bad. Our children deserve to be free to learn, with physical and mental health, just like everyone else.”

The association stressed that its opposition is not to examining alternative models to medical aides, but rather to the way the move is being implemented.

“We are not against change, and we are not against examining other models instead of aides. We are against a unilateral move, without sufficient data, without clear reasoning, without measures that define success or failure, and above all, without an answer to the most important question: While the Education Ministry is conducting the experiment, are our children safe in the education system?”

It added: “You cannot conduct an experiment on the backs of our children and only afterward check whether it succeeded, without clear success and failure measures. Our children are not a budget line, and their lives are not an experiment.”

The case underscores a broader tension facing school systems: how to keep young students with severe allergies safe while managing staffing, inclusion and limited health resources. For families, the stakes are immediate. Accidental exposure to a triggering food can escalate within minutes, and schools must be able to identify symptoms, alert a nurse or emergency responder, and administer treatment without delay. The court is now weighing whether the ministry's pilot can proceed while those safeguards and data remain in question.