During the 30 years of British rule in Palestine, a Jewish school system was created and developed mainly by the efforts of the Jewish community itself. Throughout the period there were two parallel school systems, Arab and Jewish. The Arab school system was taken over by the British authorities from the Turkish rulers, substituting Arabic for Turkish as the medium of instruction, and was maintained mainly by the government. The Mandatory government's Department of Education, which fully controlled the Arab school system, maintained only nominal supervision over the Jewish schools. There was no law of compulsory education during the Mandatory period, the Jewish community, however, succeeded in providing almost universal schooling for its children. The Jewish school population grew almost tenfold during the Mandatory period and totaled nearly 100,000 in 1948