Jewish independents do worse than other faiths

V FEWER THAN two out of five independent Jewish schools in the UK are good or outstanding, in contrast to the majority of their Muslim and Christian equivalents, according to new figures from Ofsted.

Over a third of Jewish independents were found to be inadequate — the highest percentage of any faith group — in the academic year 2018/19 and more than a quarter were rated as schools which “require improvement”.

Most Jewish independent schools serve Charedi communities and have experienced increasing problems with Ofsted during the past few years, in particular over equality requirements.

Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman said in its annual report that almost half of Jewish independent schools — 47 per cent — were failing to meet the independent school standards.

If a school does not meet any of the independent school standards, then it cannot meet the overall required

From Ofsted’s annual report standard for management and leadership, the report stated.

Mrs Spielman once again called for stronger powers to inspect unregistered institutions, saying Ofsted was continuing to work “with one hand tied behind our back”.

Ofsted’s unregistered schools task force has investigated more than 600 settings in four years and found 290 cases of unregistered schools.

“We found safeguarding or health and safety concerns in over a third of them and issued warning notices to 83 that we believe are unregistered schools,” she said.

Since the warnings, over half of the unregistered schools changed the way that they run to comply with the law. “They achieve this most commonly by reducing their hours to below 18 hours per week. Fourteen per cent have closed and 12 per cent have registered as independent schools.”

Hackney Council in London believes there could be around 30 unregistered yeshivot locally— which argue they fall outside the definition of a school.