Enrolment in Jewish primaries outside the Charedi community has dropped slightly over the past three years, in contrast with the dramatic rise in Jewish schooling in the UK in recent decades.

Overall, the rate of increase in Jewish day schools has slowed since the academic year of 2017/18, even within the Strictly Orthodox sector, according to new research published this week by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

Whereas the numbers in Jewish day schools increased by 3.4 per cent a year in the three years from 2014/15 to 2017/18, in the following three-year period to 2020/21, the increase slowed to 1.5 per cent a year.

JPR executive director Jonathan Boyd said, “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 continue to be offered that opportunity.”  

Over the past three years, actual numbers at “mainstream”- non-Charedi - primary schools fell by 0.5 per cent a year.

A possible reason, the report states, “for the recent slower growth in pupil numbers may be a decline in mainstream Jewish births between 2012 to 2015 that, in turn, has reduced the current pool of primary age Jewish schoolchildren, but has had no impact yet on secondary age pupil numbers.”

Among the Charedi population, primary numbers continued to grow – but at a slower rate of 1.8 per cent a year from 2017/18 to 2020/21 compared to 4.3 per cent a year growth in the previous three years.

The “most natural explanation” would be a decline in Charedi births for the relevant years but, JPR cautioned, more research was needed to determine it.

Overall, Charedi school numbers rose by 2.4 per cent a year over the past three years, compared with 4.5 per cent per annum over the three years before.

The Strictly Orthodox continue to form a majority of Jewish school pupils – 60 per cent compared with 40 per cent in mainstream schools (whereas in the previous three years Charedim comprised 58 per cent of numbers).

According to JPR, there were 35,825 Jewish pupils studying in full-time in 133 schools 2020/21 – up 4.7 per cent from three years before.

That is nearly sevenfold higher than the 5,200 Jewish children enrolled in Jewish schools in the 1950s and more than double the 16,700 in the mid-90s.

Since the mid-90s, mainstream Jewish school numbers have increased by almost 55 per cent, while those in Charedi institutions rocketed by 188 per cent.

But the numbers of Charedi schoolchildren is an underestimate, JPR says, because up to 2,500 young teenagers may be studying in unregistered yeshivot or seminaries.  

See: The rise and rise of Jewish schools