2 min read
Last week we ran a feature about an 11-year-old Hertfordshire boy being kept at home by his parents because he had been unable to gain a place at a Jewish secondary school.
Although he had attended a Jewish primary school, his applications to JFS, Yavneh College and JCoSS had all failed.
He was offered a place at an academy in Watford or alternatively he could travel to King Solomon High School in Essex, where there have been plenty of spare places for Jewish children in recent years.
One response to his situation has been along the lines of “Tough luck, there are many children, especially in London, who can’t get the school that they want. His parents should swallow their disappointment and settle for one of the available options.”
But that doesn’t really do justice to the family’s predicament.
Firstly, it is one of the consequences of the increased take-up of Jewish schooling that there is a diminishing number of general state schools where Jewish children go in any numbers. If you look at the activities supported by the UJIA for Jewish pupils at non-Jewish schools, they almost all take place at independent or selective schools.
Few parents want their child to be the only Jewish boy or girl, or one of just a handful, in a school of a 1,000 or more pupils. It can be hard to be the only child who takes off Yomtov, for example. Additionally, parents also worry these days about their child being plunged into a potentially hostile anti-Israel environment. It is one thing if you are part of a sizeable Jewish contingent who can stand their ground and find security in numbers, another if you are the lone Jewish kid in the class.
Even more, if you are serious about your child’s Jewish education and want them to continue it, you will feel aggrieved to see the opportunity snatched away. They are not going to get special classes in Hebrew at an ordinary state school.
It is true that in the days before JCoSS and Yavneh, King Solomon used to take an overflow from the north-west. But it is a long drive to Essex from Hertfordshire and the parents in this case say too far.
The family has won sympathy from the Chief Rabbi and others. But sympathy isn’t enough. It surely can’t be beyond the wit of the Jewish educational establishment to find some kind of satisfactory solution even now.
For years, Jewish leaders have been championing the cause of Jewish day schools. So families who have sent their children to Jewish primary schools but find them denied a place at Jewish secondary school, when places instead may go to children from homes with far less Jewish commitment, understandably feel cheated by the system.
Under current admissions procedures, a Jewish family who wouldn’t know the difference between a lulav and an etrog or who even practise another religion could still turn up to synagogue a few times in the year before secondary school entry, collect their Jewish practice certificate and win a place for their child at a Jewish school – choosing it not because they were terribly bothered about the Jewish studies on offer but because of the quality of secular education.
For a child from a Jewish primary school who loses out in the admissions lottery and is unable to go on to a Jewish secondary, there is not the only educational loss but a social one too. When all your primary friends go on to a Jewish secondary, and you are the only one who cannot, you must wonder what you have done wrong.
Of course, there are larger questions about the impact of Jewish schooling on the Jewish community of the future. Will it make us more insular and less well equipped to negotiate the wider world?
But such broader strategic issues shouldn’t be used to brush away the pain of one family who feel they have been left high and dry.
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