Israeli society consists largely of immigrants. The immigrants and sons of immigrants of yesterday are the absorbers of the immigrants of today. The crystallisation of the educational system is a product of Israel's coping with the various waves of immigration both before and after Independence. Before 1947, the Jewish educational system in Palestine was fundamentally voluntary and linked with the evolving political system of the Jewish community. After 1947, the system became state supervised and devoid of political and ideological partisan orientation. The Israeli educational system was occupied during its incipient period with solving logistics problems. From a logistic point of view, the system was not prepared for the implementation of the Compulsory Education Act of 1949, which provided free education for children from the ages of five to fourteen. A special unit was established in the Ministry of Education to deal with the immigrant children.