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.”
