School principals' agency as reflected by extracurricular activities in the Israeli education system

This study examines the nature and extent of extracurricular activities in the Palestinian Arab, Jewish Religious and Jewish Secular educational sectors (Israeli education system also includes the Ultra-Orthodox sector with its own management, monitoring and governance apparatus.) in Israel, in order to characterise the contextual variables that may affect school principals' agency. We explored 2009 Program for International Student Assessment results regarding the nature and intensity of extracurricular activities implemented in schools. We used school's questionnaires to conceptualise the relations between schools' contextual variables and extracurricular activities. Descriptive statistics and Poisson regression analyses were applied for data analysis.