The increase in sixth-form numbers at JFS this year reflects a deliberate policy to expand its educational options.

Not every child will fare well with a purely academic subject such as physics or history so the school has broadened its range of vocationally-oriented programmes.

Official data shows Jewish schools generally performed above average for these kind of qualifications —although they may have been taken by a relatively small group of students.

Take results in 2017 for Tech Levels and Applied General Qualifications at level three, which range from childcare to business studies.
The average Tech level score in English schools was 32.26; at JFS, the result was a superlative 50, followed by Hasmonean, 46.07; King David High, Manchester, 41; JCoss, 31.88; and Kantor King Solomon, 29.55.

For AGQs, where the national average was 35.72, King David Manchester scored 50; Yavneh College 43.91; Hasmonean 41 and JCoSS 40.68.

But perhaps the most striking figure from the most recent set of “performance” statistics was how much more progress girls at Hasmonean made at GCSE than boys.

Across England, girls outperform boys: for example, in the Attainment 8 measure, based on exam results, girls  did better than boys in 2017 by just over five points, 49 to 43.7. 

For Progress 8, which measures how much progress is made from entry to GCSE and where 0 is the average, girls again do better, with a score of 0.18 compared to minus 0.24 for boys.  

However, at Hasmonean, girls registered an astonishing progress score of 1.4 compared to the boys’ 0.39, a gap of more than an entire point.   
At King David Manchester, it was 0.88 for girls and 0.27 for boys; at Yavneh, 0.92 for girls and 0.34 for boys; at JFS, 1.03 for girls and 0.62 for boys; at Kantor King Solomon 0.7 for girls and 0.03 for boys; and at JCoSS, 0.58 for girls and 0.07 for boys.

Whereas in 2016 Hasmo girls did better than boys for attainment by three points, last year they stretched the gap to seven points, 67.6 to 60.2.

But boys nearly caught up at JFS,  scoring 63.4 to girls’ 63.5 (compared with nearly four points’ difference in 2016).

The data reveals generally few children who are classified as disadvantaged in Jewish schools. Just three out of 286 in the GCSE  year at JFS; 18 out of 147 at Yavneh; 10 out of 116 at King David Manchester; seven out of 89 at King David Liverpool; 18 out of 189 at JCoSS; 21 out of 150 at Hasmonean; and 39 out of 149 at Kantor King Solomon