Abstract: • Nahamu’s position on the state of education for charedi children is set out in a paper published in September 2024. The paper made recommendations that require primary legislation. This bill is a welcome step towards ensuring every
child receives a broad and balanced education, and we welcome the inclusion of provisions that will specifically improve the lives of charedi children.
• This submission focuses on the following areas of the bill:
Children not in school (clauses 24 to 29 and schedule 1)
• Independent educational institutions (clauses 30 to 35)
• Ofsted’s powers to investigate unregistered, and therefore illegal,
independent schools (clauses 36 to 37)
• Revised national curriculum (clause 41)
• School admission arrangements (clauses 47 to 50)
• The opening new schools (clauses 51 to 55).
• While legitimate homeschooling should be supported, tighter provisions are needed to prevent misuse as a guise for unregistered, illegal schooling. This includes clear definitions of “efficient” and “full-time” education, standardised
guidelines, and sufficient funding for oversight.
• Current enforcement mechanisms, including SAOs, risk being ineffective without stronger accountability measures. Remedies must prioritise access to education over punitive approaches.
• This submission underscores the need for targeted funding, strengthened oversight, and specific measures to address the unique challenges within charedi communities, ensuring all children, including charedi children, access their legal right to education
Abstract: In this report:
The number of Jewish pupils enrolled in Jewish schools has been climbing consistently for several decades and has increased significantly since the mid-1990s. This rise, described in previous JPR Jewish schools bulletins, has occurred in both the 'mainstream' and the 'Strictly Orthodox' sectors, though at different rates.
According to the latest official figures, while the overall number of registered pupils in 2023/24 shows an increase of 0.2% per annum since figures were last published by JPR three years ago, in the previous year alone, there was a reduction of 471 pupils, or 1.3%. This marks the first decrease in numbers since JPR started collecting data annually in 1995/96.
Some of the key findings in this report:
There are 136 Jewish schools in the UK, a net increase of 3 schools since 2021. The total figure is comprised of 45 mainstream Jewish schools and 91 Strictly Orthodox schools.
36,064 Jewish pupils studied in these schools in the academic year 2023/24. This represents an increase of 239 pupils, or 0.2% per annum since figures were published three years ago.
However, this growth only occurred in the first two years of these three years; in the third year (between 2022/23 and 2023/24), there was a reduction of 471 pupils, or 1.3% - the first decrease in numbers since JPR started collecting data annually in 1995/96.
For the first time, the mainstream sector has decreased across all three years in secondary and primary schools.
The Strictly Orthodox sector saw an overall increase. However, in the last academic year, the number of pupils in Strictly Orthodox schools fell by 358. This is not a result of demographic decline or a change in parental preference; instead, it reflects shifting government policy and practice in schools, reducing the number of children recorded in registered Strictly Orthodox schools.
The balance between registered mainstream and Strictly Orthodox schools has remained stable. 60% of Jewish pupils in Jewish schools are in Strictly Orthodox schools; 40% are in mainstream Jewish schools. This is a significant shift since the mid-1990s when the ratio was 55% mainstream to 45% Strictly Orthodox.
87% of all Jewish pupils in mainstream schools are in Greater London and South Hertfordshire. This distinction is much less pronounced in the Strictly Orthodox sector, with 63% being in London.
Abstract: Faith schools remain a topic of debate in contemporary Britain. In 2017, faith schools accounted for 33.7% of state-funded mainstream schools. Faith schools differ from other state-funded mainstream schools in many ways. For example, they have the ability to control the content taught in their Religious Education and Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) syllabuses and have control over their admissions arrangements. This project explores the impact Jewish schools can have on one’s adult beliefs, through a small-scale study. This study analyses online questionnaire responses from 25 participants aged 19-27. All participants in this sample attended the same Jewish secondary school in London, referred to as ‘School A’. The responses show that faith schools can have a significant effect on one’s adult beliefs, due to the ways in which they teach pupils about different religions, political ideologies, and sexuality. This was found to be mainly due to the perceived exclusion of other religious beliefs and opinions. Despite this, most of the participants still felt able to express themselves and their beliefs. Moreover, this study’s participants felt that their adult beliefs were more significantly impacted by their family and community, rather than by their school. The study’s findings highlight a need to improve the inclusivity of SRE teaching in Jewish schools. This project recommends that further research is conducted on the impact of attending a Jewish secondary school on an individual’s beliefs later in life, and whether this is also representative of all UK faith schools.
Abstract: The initiatives that took place to support Israeli families temporarily in the UK
started within three days after 7th October.
• Key organisations in the Jewish Community came together to help: JAFI, UJIA,
PaJeS, CST.
• They were supported by other organisations in various ways, e.g. JVN, and by
many individuals.
• There was a huge gap between the large number of expressions of interest in
school places and eventual places taken up.
• Each Local Education Authority Admissions process was different from each other,
and LEAs waived usual procedures to be accommodating and speed up the
admissions processes.
• Almost all temporary Israeli families were able to visit their UK school prior to
accepting a place and starting school.
• By November, more than 100 children had been placed in schools, mostly in the
primary sector.
• Whilst each school dealt uniquely with the situation of having temporary families in
their schools, there were many commonalities, e.g. acquiring school uniform,
communication, pairing with other Hebrew speakers.
• Relating to the school system in the UK has been a steep learning curve for these
families.
• PaJeS has been significantly involved in providing support, especially in
admissions advice, Hebrew, wellbeing, funding and resources.
• A concern at the beginning, which was that the regular school population would be
disadvantage by schools accepting these additional families, has not materialised.
• By the beginning of December 2023, although some families are still arriving, the
number of Israelis temporarily in UK schools has already begun to decrease.
• Some families who are leaving, want an option to return and want schools to “save”
their places for them, which challenges the schools.
Abstract: This factsheet looks into Jewish education in the UK and the rest of Europe, highlighting parents’ different motives when choosing a Jewish or non-Jewish school for their children. The paper draws data from three sources: previous JPR research on school registration numbers, a 2018 pan-European study sponsored by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), conducted by a joint JPR-Ipsos team, and JPR’s spring 2023 survey of Jews in the UK.
Some of the key findings in this factsheet:
The number of Jewish children attending Jewish schools has increased significantly over time and is expected to reach about 40,000 by the mid-2020s;
In the UK, the number of children attending Haredi schools outnumbers the number of Jewish children in mainstream Jewish schools by about three to two.
Parents in the UK, France and across Europe are most likely to point to a desire for their child to develop a strong Jewish identity as a motive for registering their children to a Jewish school;
Jewish identity is followed in most places by a desire for their children to have friends with similar values, with the exception of France, where concern about antisemitism in non-Jewish schools is a more common motive;
In the UK and France, the most common motive for parents to send their children to a non-Jewish school is actively preferring a non-Jewish (integrated) environment, cited by about two-thirds of all such parents in both countries;
Convenience also commonly features as a reason not to send children to a Jewish school, coming second on the list in the UK and France, and topping it elsewhere in Europe.
Academic standards and availability are also marked highly as reasons parents prefer a non-Jewish school for their children, particularly in the UK.
Topics: Disability and Special Needs, Jewish Continuity, Language, Hebrew, Interviews, Main Topic: Other, Schools: Non-Jewish, Schools: Jewish Schools, Education: Special Education, Schools: Jewish Pupils In Non-Jewish Schools, Schools: Jewish Pupils in Jewish Schools, Children and Childhood: Jewish
Abstract: The number of Jewish pupils enrolled in Jewish schools has been climbing consistently for several decades and has increased significantly since the mid-1990s. This rise, described in previous JPR Jewish schools bulletins, has taken place in both the ‘mainstream’ and the ‘strictly Orthodox’ sectors. However, JPR’s new schools bulletin reports that, while the number of registered pupils in 2021/21 shows an overall increase of 1,612 pupils on three years previously, the growth rate has moderated in recent years, nearly flattening within the mainstream sector.
“These new findings are already playing an important role in helping community leaders to plan the future of Jewish education in this country”, says Dr Jonathan Boyd, Executive Director of JPR. “The clear slowdown in growth in the mainstream sector, particularly at primary level, urgently needs to be understood to ensure that all Jewish children who wish to be educated within the Jewish school system can continue to be offered that opportunity.”
Some of the key findings in this report:
35,825 Jewish pupils were studying in 133 Jewish schools in the academic year 2020/21. This represents an increase of 1,612 pupils, or 4.7%, since 2017/18.
60% of Jewish pupils in Jewish schools are in strictly Orthodox schools; 40% are in non-strictly Orthodox or ‘mainstream’ Jewish schools, a slight shift from 58% to 42% three years previously.
Almost three-quarters of all Jewish pupils in Jewish schools are in schools in Greater London or South Hertfordshire (73.3%) – a drop from 74.6% in the 2017/18 academic year that is influenced by a shift towards Manchester (27% to 29%) and away from London (67% to 65%) in the strictly Orthodox sector.
The geographical distinction between London and elsewhere is most pronounced in the mainstream Jewish sector, where 86% attend schools in London or the surrounding area.
Overall, there has been growth in the numbers of both primary and secondary school pupils since 2017/18, but this conceals a fall in primary pupil numbers for the mainstream Jewish sector over the last two academic years.
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Schools: Jewish Schools, Schools: Seconday / High Schools, Mental Health, Surveys, Focus Groups, Bar and Bat Mitzvah, Youth: Jewish, Israel Tours and Programmes, Covid-19 Pandemic, Youth Movements: Jewish, Schools: Jewish Pupils in Jewish Schools
Abstract: During February and March 2020, the world was plunged into responding to the Covid-19 pandemic. This saw unprecedented restrictions to people’s lives in an effort to prevent the spread of a highly infectious disease.
In the UK, from 23rd March 2020, the entire population was put into “lockdown” by the government, effectively suspending almost all forms of activity outside the home. By the time of writing, in the Autumn of 2021, the UK has endured three lockdowns resulting in enormous disruption to every sphere of life. The country has not yet returned to normality.
The effect on every aspect of people’s lives – family, mental wellbeing, social, economic, educational and religious - has been immense. This study explores the effect of the pandemic on the Jewish lives of teenagers. It pays
special attention to three key moments in their Jewish development: bar/bat mitzvah; Israel tour and summer camp; and their graduation from school.
Abstract: Produced by JPR on behalf of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and authored by JPR Executive Director, Dr Jonathan Boyd, this statistical bulletin contains data on Jewish school enrolment in the UK for the academic years 2015/16 to 2017/18. It is intended to help community educators and policy makers monitor changing trends over time and to inform thinking about the development of the field.
The report confirms and adds to our existing understanding of enrolment, demonstrating again that more and more Jewish children are going to Jewish schools. The actual number has risen from about 5,000 in the 1950s to close to 35,000 today, a period which, by contrast, has also seen the UK Jewish population as a whole decline by about 30%. The most acute numerical increase has occurred over the past twenty years or so, with the total more or less doubling from about 17,000 in the mid-1990s to the level found today.
Amongst the key findings in the paper:
There were 34,547 Jewish children studying in Jewish schools in the academic year 2017/18.
This represents an increase of 3,633 children, or 11.8% since the last figures were published for the academic year 2014/2015.
This increase can be observed in both the mainstream and strictly Orthodox sectors: the mainstream sector had 1,666 more Jewish children in 2017/18 compared to 2014/15; the strictly Orthodox sector had an additional 2,367 children over the same period.
58% of Jewish children in Jewish schools are in strictly Orthodox schools; 42% in non-strictly Orthodox or ‘mainstream’ Jewish schools.
Three quarters of all Jewish children in Jewish schools are in the Greater London area or South Hertfordshire.
Enrolment in strictly Orthodox schools continues to increase dramatically over time, increasing by an estimated 166%, or over 12,000 children, since the mid-1990s.
The annual growth rate of the strictly Orthodox sector is estimated to be about 4.3%, compared to 3.1% in the mainstream sector.
The growth of the Jewish school sector is a reflection both of high fertility levels in the strictly Orthodox part of the Jewish community, and a growing interest in Jewish schooling within the more mainstream part of it. UK Jewish community leaders have focused considerable attention on Jewish schooling in recent years out of concerns about declining levels of Jewish knowledge and engagement. However, as these schools have developed, considerable attention has focused on general academic quality which has helped to attract higher numbers of pupils. In turn, as the choice of Jewish schooling has become more common, it has also grown in acceptability, pushing up numbers still further.
Abstract: Faith schools represent controversial aspects of England’s educational politics, yet they have been largely overlooked as sites for geographical analysis. Moreover, although other social science disciplines have attended to a range of questions regarding faith schools, some important issues remain underexamined. In particular, contestation within ethnic and religious groups regarding notions of identity have generally been ignored in an educational context, whilst the majority of research into Jewish schools more specifically has failed to attend to the personal qualities of Jewishness. The interrelationships between faith schools (of all kinds) and places of worship have also received minimal attention.
In response, this investigation draws upon a range of theoretical approaches to identity in order to illustrate how Jewish schools are implicated in the changing spatiality and performance of individuals’ Jewishness. Central to this research is a case study of the Jewish Community Secondary School (JCoSS), England’s only pluralist Jewish secondary school, with more extensive elements provided by interviews with other stakeholders in Anglo-Jewry. Parents often viewed Jewish schools as a means of attaining a highly-regarded ‘secular’ academic education in a Jewish school, whilst also enabling their children to socialise with other Jews. In the process, synagogues’ traditional functions of education and socialisation have been co-opted by Jewish schools, revealing a shift in the spatiality of young people’s Anglo-Jewish identity practices. Furthermore, JCoSS, as well as many synagogues, have come to represent spaces of contestation over ‘authentic’ Jewishness, given widely varying conceptualisations of ‘proper’ Jewish practice and identity amongst parents, pupils and rabbis. Yet, although JCoSS offers its pupils considerable autonomy to determine their practices, such choice is not limitless, revealing an inherent dilemma in inclusivity. The thesis thus explores how different manifestations of Jewishness are constructed, practised and problematised in a school space (which itself is dynamic and contested), and beyond.
Abstract: Over the last 130 years attendance by Jewish children at Jewish day schools in Britain has waxed and waned, until now, in the twenty-first century, attendance figures are similar to those of the 1880s, with almost 60 per cent of Jewish children attending a Jewish primary or secondary school. Recent research has examined this trend within the Jewish population as a whole, mainly concentrating on Jewish secondary schooling. Because of the impact this phenomenon has had on chederim and because of the fundamental differences between the different branches of Judaism, it is important for Jewish educators and leaders to understand what factors lie behind the choices that parents make when deciding on their children's schooling. This study investigates the reasons why parents who are affiliated to Progressive synagogues choose to send their children to Orthodox Jewish primary schools, concentrating on one Progressive community in the north of England in particular, and contrasting the data with that from two larger and older communities. The data was collected through the use of interviews and questionnaires, then analysed in relation to the history and size of the three communities and contrasted with the conclusions of previous studies. The findings suggest that the size and relative age and history of the principal community have had a significant influence on the attitudes of the parents toward the city's Jewish community and the importance of the role of the Orthodox Jewish primary school in maintaining that community, to the extent that the parents' social identity as 'Jews' is more important to them than their synagogue affiliation.
Abstract: This study is focused at understanding what is motivating children towards learning in a religious Jewish school? This particular context has the distinctive feature of a dual curriculum, namely the National Curriculum and a Jewish Studies curriculum. Given the span of learning which takes place in this educational context the researcher was interested to explore the motivational forces apparent in the school as perceived by school staff and children with relation to both curricula. A further interest was to explore whether 'learning' situated in a distinctive value-based context couched in a set of religious beliefs would impact on children's motivational orientations towards learning. Despite the numerous motivational theories which have developed and been applied to educational contexts over the last fifty years, the school researched is situated as part of a closed community where no significant research has taken place. Given the unique features of this educational setting the research has been conducted in a context-specific way. Framed in Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology (Charmaz 2006) the researcher has collected and analysed data, and being part of this community has been able to organise and interpret the generated themes underlying the motivational orientations which are dynamic in this community. Consistent with Grounded Theory methodology the theoretical framework was constructed through a rigorous analysis and organisation of data in a bottom-up way which lead to the following formulation: 'In the context of a religious Jewish school, learning is reinforced at every level as being of ultimate value'. This grounded theory was further broken down in terms of understanding its psychological underpinnings, drawing from social learning theory, ecosystemic perspective and moral psychology. This was further unpicked in terms of the Jewish literature pertaining to motivation and learning and in particular to its emphasis on the notion of respect to significant others and its impact on children's adaptation to cultural and religious influences. Apart from the fact that children are motivated towards learning in individual ways, this study highlights the impact of societal and systemic influences on motivational orientations towards learning. Although this has been demonstrated in a particular context, the researcher advocates the position that any school by virtue of being a social context will have environmental influences operating at a systemic level. Therefore, the findings generated from this study are shown to be generalisable to other educational contexts as well. Following the call of the Every Child Matters (2003) agenda, to improve the five major outcomes for children, it is fundamentally important to ensure that children are motivated to learn. It is hoped that this study which can be considered as a preliminary study of 'the influence of social processes on motivation' will be replicated across respective communities and educational contexts to demonstrate what the impact of these social processes are and how children's engagement and motivation towards learning can be enhanced.
Abstract: The number of Jewish children in Jewish schools has almost doubled since the mid-1990s, rising from 16,700 then to over 30,000 now, while the number of Jewish schools has jumped from 62 to 139 over the same period.
The report is the first in a series of studies being produced by the new partnership between the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, cooperating on the collection, analysis and publication of key community statistics.
The results of the study show that the majority of the 30,900 Jewish children studying in Jewish schools in 2014/15 were in haredi schools (17,500, or 57%), whilst the remainder (13,400, or 43%) were in mainstream schools. Twenty years ago, the equivalent proportions were 45% strictly Orthodox, 55% mainstream. The shifting balance provides further evidence of the changing composition of the British Jewish community.
The growth in the haredi sector is particularly striking. There are three times as many haredi schools in the UK today as there were twenty years ago, educating 10,000 more children between them.
However, the overall increase in enrolment is not exclusively due to the growth of the haredi population. A significant part of the upsurge can also be explained by developments in the non-haredi or ‘mainstream’ sector.
More than four out of ten mainstream Jewish school-age children are now studying in Jewish schools, compared with just a quarter twenty years ago. In numerical terms, that constitutes an increase of over 4,000 children. To accommodate this increase, there are 11 more Jewish schools operating in the mainstream sector than there were in the mid-1990s. Collectively, about 85% of all pupils studying in them are Jewish.
From a geographical perspective, Jewish pupil enrolment in mainstream schools in London and the surrounding areas has been growing steadily over the past twenty years, increasing by 72% since the mid-1990s. By contrast, Jewish pupil enrolment in mainstream Jewish schools outside of London has declined by 23% over the same period. In short, the mainstream Jewish school sector has become increasingly London-centric.
The geographical dynamics are very different in the haredi sector. Whilst the majority of pupils in the strictly Orthodox sector are still attending schools in London, the number in Manchester has more than trebled over the past twenty years, and the city has increased its share of haredi pupils from one in five to one in four of the total. Thus, numbers in the haredi school sector reveal a shift towards Manchester.
Abstract: Between September 2000 and August 2001, more than 600,000 babies were born in the UK. Of those, around 2,800 were born within the Jewish community. These babies – our millennium cohort – have grown up in complex, exciting and
challenging times. We are interested in the changing Jewish lives of the children born in that cohort.
We are following students, and their parents, who chose one of seven Jewish secondary schools for their children. We are following the children who entered Year 7 in September 2011. As we are collecting data every two years, the third and most recent phase of data analysis has just been completed, whilst the students are in Year 11. We are comparing this group to families who chose to send their child to non-Jewish schools.
This is a unique opportunity to conduct an in-depth and sustained exploration of the changing lives of young people and their
families.
In 2016, we received completed surveys from 799 students (almost 80% of the total);
278 from parents with students at Jewish schools and a further 57 from families with
children at non-Jewish schools. In addition we interviewed 110 families.
This publication focuses on what we have been learning with regard to our students’ developing identities. To what extent do they identify as Jews? As British citizens? We wanted to find out the extent to which these elements play a role in our students’ lives, and in what ways school plays a role in that development.
