It may be not a surprise that the governors of King Solomon High School in Redbridge have launched a consultation on whether to close it – a decade ago their predecessors held a review into its future. Even so, the fall in pupil numbers has been sudden.
Behind the move lies the seemingly inexorable numerical contraction of Redbridge Jewry, which was once estimated to be in the region of 30,000 in the 1970s. Of the capital’s main Jewish centres, Redbridge has suffered the steepest fall over the past couple of decades, by 57 per cent, from around 14,800 according to the 2001 Census to 6,400 in 2021.
When the school opened in 1993, it was one of only three state-aided Jewish secondary schools besides JFS and Hasmonean (which subsequently split into two schools). For a while it benefited from a shortage of Jewish places in north-west London, with some pupils being bussed from there to Redbridge – until that source dried up with the opening of first Yavneh College in Hertfordshire and then JCoSS in Barnet.
By 2011, the follow-up report of the Jewish Leadership Council’s commission on Jewish schools was warning that the Redbridge community was facing a “serious demographic challenge”.
When KSHS moved from five-form to six-form entry in 2014, the proportion of Jewish pupils was set to drop even further: by 2015, they formed less than half of the pupil body – 44 per cent. Now, they comprise around 20 per cent, with just six Jewish pupils entering year 7 this September.
Yet, Liverpool’s Jewish community is smaller than Redbridge, and King David High School Liverpool has retained its Jewish ethos with a fraction of the Jewish pupils than KSHS still has.
It is the slump in pupils overall that has prompted the proposal for closure. For some years, the school has been operating at less than capacity – but pupil numbers in current years 9 to 11, ranging from 119 to 129, show that these years are two-thirds or more full.
Year 8, however, with only 84, plummets to under half and this year only 55 entered year 7, occupying less than a third of the 180 places available. More than 70 pupils transferred to other schools from KSHS last year.
As pupils roll fall, so does funding – and governors calculate the deficit will reach more than £900,000 by next spring.
KSHS is by no means the only secondary school in Redbridge to have experienced a drop in numbers. But the school has had particular issues to contend with. It has struggled to maintain stable leadership: its interim head, Jonathan Harris, is the sixth head since September 2013.
Two critical Ofsted reports in 2021 and 2024, rating the school as “requires improvement”, hardly helped its reputation; and a similar grade for its Jewish studies programme from Pikuach three years ago did nothing to encourage Jewish parents.
Its GCSE attainment score of 46.8 per pupil was higher than the national average but lower than the 53.9 (meaning above a grade 5 on average) for state schools in the borough as a whole.
When sliding numbers led to a suspension of its sixth form entry two years ago, that was “the first nail in the coffin”, said Dani Graph, whose daughter Georgie took her GCSEs at KSHS that year. Now she is looking for an alternative school for younger daughter Jaime, who is in year 9 at KSHS.
“We’re devastated,” her mother said. "She went to Ilford Jewish Primary School so King Solomon was the natural progression. They have looked after her so well. What I loved about the school is that when she needed a hug, they gave her a hug. There was always support on offer.”
But while governors stress that no decision has been made and it may not be until the end of the year that the local authority makes one, she is pessimistic about its survival. “It is not sustainable,” she said. “It’s dead and buried. No one is coming to rescue it this time.”
Another parent, who did not wish to be named, echoed the gloomy prognosis, arguing that there had been “no positive campaign to change the perception of the school… If action had been taken five years ago, maybe they could have turned things around.”
But he claimed that there were parents who although insisting on the importance for the Jewish community of retaining King Solomon, nevertheless had not backed it by sending their own children there.
Instead they were opting for other state schools such as Davenant in Chigwell or West Hatch in Loughton. Davenant is a Church of England school whose admissions guide mentions that it takes a number of Jewish children. Its religious practice requirement – regular attendance at a place of worship -– to ensure higher priority is actually far more demanding than King Solomon’s.
Over the years, various options have been considered for KSHS – one was to relocate the school as a satellite of another Jewish school. More recently, the JC understands, an approach was made to Avanti, a Hindu school trust, with the idea of setting up a joint faith school.
A local rabbi, Mordechai Wollenberg of Woodfood Forest Synagogue, said the situation was “sad” but felt “it is not something that has happened overnight. For a long time the local community hasn’t bought into King Solomon.”
He contrasted it with King David Liverpool, “which was embedded in the community”.
But there was still time for positive action, he suggested. “Sometimes a crisis can galvanise people… We’d like to have a Jewish [secondary] school in the area.”
Both one-form entry Jewish primaries in the area – one Orthodox, the other pluralist – currently rely on some non-Jewish pupils to fill their classes. But Lisa West, head of the Orthodox Wohl Ilford, which shares a site with King Solomon, said the primary was on an “upward trajectory” as the Jewish proportion of the new year-7 was higher at 60 per than the average 55 per cent for the school as a whole.
Meanwhile, like Dani, parents will be exploring other possibilities for their children. When Immanuel College was staring closure in the face, Yavneh College reached out and was ready to mount a fundraising drive to take in additional children.
Hertfordshire is some distance from Redbridge, but once children were bussed from north-west to east. Now the pupil traffic may have to be in the other direction.
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