Family & Education
Board of Deputies keeps mum on yeshivah regulation controversy
The representative body says it will not be commenting on government’s new education proposals
January 21, 2025 14:18
The representative body says it will not be commenting on government’s new education proposals
January 21, 2025 14:18The Board of Deputies is staying out of the debate on government moves to regulate yeshivot that have caused consternation within parts of the Charedi community.
New measures contained in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill — which recently passed its second reading in the Commons -—would force yeshivot to register with the Department for Education and to undergo authorised inspections.
The proposals were last week described as “alarming” by the president of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations, Rabbi Binyomin Stern, who appealed for the community to be “allowed to peacefully continue our way of life”.
Asked where it stood on the Bill, the Board this week said it would not be making a comment.
Hundreds of young teenage boys are thought to be educated in as many as 29 unregistered yeshivot in Stamford Hill, according to Hackney Council.
The religious curriculum of yeshivot is considered too narrow for them to qualify them as schools under the current legal definition.
But the new Bill would introduce new powers for the state to regulate them, while also making it compulsory for parents to register children who are home-schooled or taught in out-of-school settings such as yeshivot.
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, president of the Accord Coalition — which campaigns for religious schools to be more inclusive of children of other faiths — commented that it was “astonishing that some Charedi groups are protesting against the Bill and claiming it denies their religious liberty”.
But this week the British Rabbinical Union, a conservative group within the Charedi community that has organised demonstrations against the Bill, submitted a detailed response to Parliament.
It asked the Public Bill Committee to “protect our religious rights and the autonomy of the Charedi educational system by enabling it to be excluded from specific requirements and oversight provisions”.
It called the proposed registration scheme “fundamentally flawed, unworkable, and excessively oppressive” and “a model of constant and intrusive surveillance”.
The BRU also warned against treating yeshivot as independent schools and making them subject to the same official standards.
“If faith-based institutions cannot comply with these conditions,” the BRU said, “they may face closure, leaving Orthodox Jewish parents and children with no realistic educational options.”