PRAYING TO COMBAT OFSTED
THIS WEEK’S Yom Tefillah, Day of Prayer, in Stamford Hill was the most visible sign yet of anxiety within Charedi communities over the future of their schools.
Thousands of men and boys gathered outside a local synagogue on Tuesday morning at the behest of their rabbis. There were no slogans or placards but voices raised in the recitation of psalms.
Charedi leaders believe education officials and an overweening inspectorate have unfairly used the government’s British values agenda — introduced primarily to combat the threat of jihadist extremism — to attack conservative religious schools in general. Some inspectors, they think, have exceeded their brief in expecting schools to talk openly about LGBT issues as part of the requirement to teach respect and tolerance for others.
What has brought the conflict to a head are proposed new guidelines from the Department for Education which would strengthen the inspectors’ hand and make compliance impossible for many Charedi schools, according to Charedi rabbis. They warn that unless the DfE is willing to be flexible, the whole future of Orthodoxy in the UK is in jeopardy.
The education authorities can hardly be unaware of the depth of feeling among the strictly Orthodox because lobbying efforts, in one form or another, have been gathering momentum.
This week, Ivan Lewis, the MP for Bury South, hosted a meeting in Parliament of fellow-MPs from constituencies with Charedi schools to discuss the situation. It was instigated at the request of a Manchester Orthodox charity and attended also by representatives of the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council’s education division, Partnerships for Jewish Schools, and the newly formed Chinuch (“Education”) UK.
Chinuch UK, backed by senior Charedi rabbis, has been launched to represent some 70 schools across the strictly Orthodox spectrum in Hack- ney, North-West London, Manchester and Gateshead.
Despite its name, it is not a sister organisation to Shechita UK and Milah UK, the organisations which respectively defend kosher meat and circumcision. Shimon Cohen, chairman of the PR Office, which campaigns for Shechita UK and Milah UK, made it clear he has not been asked to be involved with it. He happens to be working with a separate organisation, the Stamford Hill-based Torah Education Committee, set up by local activists to defend their school system.
David Landau, a member of Chinuch UK’s leadership and chairman of the state-aided Menorah High School for Girls in London, had a chance to exchange a few words with Education Secretary Damian Hinds when he attended a meeting for faith school representatives at the DfE on Monday.
Mr Landau said the new organisation has had “vocal support” from the Board and Pajes.
Meanwhile, the problems facing Charedi schools was one of the issues raised with Mr Hinds by Board chief executive Gillian Merron and the new chairman of its community and education division, Edwin Shuker, when they met him last week.
Far from the Charedi view going unheard, you may wonder if there are now too many organisations knocking at the government’s door. But that’s a question for another time.