ABSTRACT
The issue of the matriculation studies, matriculation exams, and matriculation certificate has a key role in the Israeli education system and thus was central to Kedma’s life. The matriculation process serves as an assessing tool that evaluates the students’ knowledge in eight different disciplines. Gaining a matriculation certificate hence enables the student to gain higher education, as well as certain positions in the labor market. In light of the importance ascribed to the matriculation exams, the school and the parents wished the students to study for the exams in order to improve the future opportunities open to them. Most of the parents supported a pedagogical process that would lead the students to successfully pass the matriculation exams. A vast majority of these parents were born in Israel to immigrants from Muslim and Arab countries who moved to the neighborhood during the ‘50s. Only a few of them finished high school and have a high school diploma.
