Kippot and cohesion

SINCE MICHAEL Gove became Education Secretary nearly three years ago, initiatives have poured from his office: free schools, the English Baccalaureate (later curtailed), reform of the curriculum and the exam system. But Spencer Lewis is used to coping with change. Formerly head of King Solomon High School in Redbridge, he rose through the ranks after joining King Solomon 19 years ago as a Jewish studies teacher.

The main thrust of the reforms is to encourage more academic rigour — not an ambition Mr Lewis objects to. “Ninety five per cent of students at King Solomon go on to university and they are going to some of the best universities in the country,” he says. “It is important that GCSEs and A-levels are of a high standard, because we all want to be producing students with the best knowledge and skills. But there is a place in schools, and I think a big place, for things like art, technology, music and sport.”

It is also important to recognise the value of vocational courses. “Previously we offered a BTEC course in health and social care,” he says. “The students went on to careers like midwifery or working with children. We don’t offer that now; we offer media studies. Everyone jokes about media studies. But they are not sitting watching television all day. They are making films, editing, using the Mac.”

In the pursuit of academic improvement, he feels, schools should not lose sight of pastoral and other social education. He highlights the previous government’s “quite interesting” policies on community cohesion and the Every Child Matters agenda, which sought to promote wellbeing and contribution to society. Social cohesion is a key aspect of King Solomon. For the past three years, more than a third of new first-years have been non-Jewish. But “all the students go to Jewish studies lessons. All the boys wear kippot, everybody does Ivrit. Everybody is involved in the chagim, everybody was dressed up for Purim. We do a lot of work with the Three Faiths Forum. And we teach the Jewish children about the cultures of the other students in the school.”

Jewish studies, naturally, remain close to Mr Lewis’s heart: he has an MA in the subject and spent a year on a senior educators’ programme at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University. He hopes that the new Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis might h e l p t o bring more funding for the teachi ng o f J e wis h studies, because that’s what makes a Jewish school “unique”.