Schools and gans in Haifa

Haifa has a big school system: about 56,653 pupils in municipal and private education, and the Ministry of Education's open data lists 747 active institutions in the city, including 452 kindergartens, 130 daycare centres, 106 schools and 5 olim ulpanim.

Where things stand for 2027-28

On 9 October 2026 Haifa Municipality had not yet published registration dates for the 2027-28 school year (5788). The dates below are from the 2026-27 round and show the usual pattern: registration for gan and first grade opens in mid-January and runs about three weeks. Check the kindergarten registration page (opens in a new tab) and the first-grade page (opens in a new tab) from December.

Gan (ages 3 to 5)

• Registration is compulsory from age 3, and every child in a municipal gan must be registered again each year.
• For 2026-27 it ran from Monday 19 January to Sunday 8 February 2026, on the city's online registration system or in person at the registration centre. It is not first come, first served: any date inside the window counts the same.
• The 2026-27 age groups were: compulsory gan (age 5) born in 2021, age 4 born in 2022, age 3 born in 2023. The birth years move on by one each year.
• You name a first and a second choice. Placement depends on the education stream, your address, the child's age, continuity, gender balance and special needs; where a gan is over-subscribed the city may hold a lottery among families who chose it first.
• Placements are published in May. An appeal can be filed once, with reasons, within 7 days of the placement notice; appeal committees decide in July.
• City-wide (supra-regional) gans that take applications from any area, mostly by lottery: the Open School's "Tor" and "Gan Shelanu", the anthroposophic "Keren Or" in Bat Galim (priority to Bat Galim residents), "Gan Mischak" at the Ein HaYam school, the "Gan BaYa'ar" forest gan and a bilingual gan.
• For a recognised but unofficial gan, get its "Appendix D" form first and upload it with your registration.
• Tzaharon (after-gan programme): tick the option while registering; you are then passed to the Neve Yosef community-centre network, which runs the gan tzaharonim. A group opens only with a minimum number of children (tzaharon page (opens in a new tab)).

First grade

• Children register for the primary school of their address zone; the city has a zone search and a GIS map on the first-grade page (opens in a new tab).
• For 2026-27 the window was the same 19 January - 8 February 2026, for children born in 2020.
• Applications to city-wide schools are only accepted in that window: list your zone school first and the special school second. Answers come in March, and the city does not pay travel costs to a school outside your zone.
• To keep a child in gan for another year, ask the gan teacher for the form (it goes to the educational psychology service) and still register for first grade.
• After-school care: 31 schools run clubs and tzaharonim through the municipal community system, including government-supported "Nitzanim" tzaharonim. The city gives NIS 860 a month for grades 1-2 after the ministry subsidy and NIS 960 for grade 3 (community system page (opens in a new tab)).

Middle school (grade 7)

• Pupils of some primary schools choose between several secondary schools in their zone. For 2026-27 that window was 13-20 January 2026.
• City-wide secondary options listed by the municipality: the Re'ut School for the Arts, Basmat, the bilingual track at Ironi Alef and the Al-Karma science high school (grade 9, Arab society) (high-school registration (opens in a new tab)).
• In Kiryat Haim, pupils are split between the Shaked and Dagan middle schools by a lottery held in May.

Documents and moving to Haifa

• An updated teudat zehut of a parent with the child listed in the appendix (sefach), a rental or purchase contract and an arnona bill matching the ID address. You may also be asked for a water-company form.
• Families moving to Haifa during the year also need a cancellation-of-registration form from their previous municipality.
• Both parents must consent; separated or single parents fill in a declaration form.

The registration centre

Education registration and information centre, 9 HaRav Markus St. Phone 1-700-50-7002 (extension 1), Sun-Thu 08:00-14:00; WhatsApp 04-8357002. Walk-in hours Sun-Thu 08:00-12:00 and Tue 13:00-15:00, plus Mon and Wed 16:00-18:00 during the registration period.

Help for olim children

• Beit Ole (opens in a new tab) coordinators enrol children in gan and school: send them a photo of the teudat oleh and of the teudat zehut showing your address. Municipal gans start at age 3, so younger children need a daycare.
• Nefesh B'Nefesh lists extra Hebrew help, a full exemption from school service fees, a summer Hebrew ulpan and individual after-school help for olim pupils in Haifa (NBN Haifa guide (opens in a new tab)).
• In summer 2026 Beit Ole ran a children's ulpan at the Dror school in Kiryat Eliezer (Beit Ole, learning Hebrew (opens in a new tab)).

State-religious options

Of Haifa's 452 listed gans, 316 are state, 104 Haredi and 32 state-religious; see the state-religious gans. Primary schools include Netiv Eliezer-Carmel in Ahuza and the Rambam school in Neve Sha'anan. For secondary school, the ministry list includes Ulpanat Tzvia and AMIT Ironi Vav for girls, and Yeshivat Bnei Akiva Yavne and Ironi Bet Yeshiva for boys. Kiryat Shmuel has religious primary schools and the Bnei Akiva Pirchei Aharon yeshiva high school.

Independent schools

• The Hebrew Reali School describes itself as an independent K-12 school with several campuses (the Realigan kindergartens, Hadar, Ahuza, Matos in Carmel Center and Beit Biram for 9th grade and high school). Registration is online and its site has an English version. The ministry lists it as "recognised but not official".
• The Leo Baeck Education Center (90 Derech Tsarfat; 04-8300500) includes a school, the Ohel Avraham congregation, a community centre and a sports club. Its learning centre helps pupils who need support in Hebrew, English and maths. An expat directory says it has a bilingual, IB track; I haven't confirmed that on the school's own site, so ask the school.
• A "Haifa International School" appears in an expat directory, but its website didn't load on 5 October 2026. Treat it as unverified.

The ministry list also has a state bilingual Hebrew-Arabic primary school.

After school

Haifa has 72 youth-movement branches with about 14,427 members, and municipal youth centres in Hadar, Kiryat Eliezer, Ramat Begin, Kiryat Haim and elsewhere, mostly Sun-Thu 16:00-20:00. See community centres.

What I couldn't check

I don't know which schools have strong English or Russian support for new arrivals beyond the general olim help above. If your children are at school in Haifa, I'd love to hear what worked.