Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has praised the religious education service Pikuach, describing it as “an absolute blessing for our schools”.
Speaking at a ceremony in London to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pikuach as the UK’s only accredited Jewish inspection service, Rabbi Mirvis said Pikuach director Jeffrey Leader had been “an incredible source of inspiration for our community at so many different level”.
Board of Deputies president Jonathan Arkush told the 50 guests that Pikuach was set up in 1996 as a Board initiative. He said: “The Board is very proud to have it on behalf of the community.”
Ofsted’s director of education Sean Harford said it was “an honour and a privilege to present graduation certificates to newly qualified Pikuach inspectors”.
He praised Pikuach’s training for Sikh as well as Jewish inspectors - this “was something to celebrate”, he said.
Mr Leader said the service had carried out almost 200 inspections and boasted a team of 30 inspectors more than three-quarters of whom were now or had been headteachers or deputy headteachers of Jewish schools.
He said: “Our inspection handbook is heavily based on a regulatory Ofsted model and we need to move closer to the kind of faith-based model favoured by our Church of England and Catholic colleagues.
"What I mean by this is we need to try to find out, through inspection, the impact that Jewish education makes on a child’s life. The children we speak to might be able to answer the knowledge based-questions but a knowledgeable Jew isn’t necessarily a committed Jew.”
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