Plans to open a Londdon sixth-form Jewish college specialising in the new vocational T-levels have been dropped.

Patrick Moriarty, the former JCoSS headteacher who has been leading the JV6 project, said a stand-alone college would “not be viable”.

But he promised that efforts would continue to try to improve vocational options for Jewish schoolchildren.

The envisaged college would have needed to take in a large number of students from outside the community to make it sustainable, he explained, which would have changed its Jewish ethos. Or it would have risked undermining existing Jewish schools by taking too many students away from them.

He said he was “a bit disappointed but not entirely surprised” at the decision not to proceed with the college. But he stressed: “This is a pivot for JV6 rather than the end of the road. We know that the relationship between education and employment is already changing and needs to continue doing so in the coming decades as new trends in work and the economy take hold.  

“So we are considering other ways to support students and schools in this, by working with employers to tease out what might be needed for the jobs of the 2030s and how schools might evolve to ensure the best preparation for their students, whether on A-level, T-level or other courses.”

Schools were “interested and aware of the opportunities and challenges of T-levels and I am confident that the community’s schools will rise to that challenge one way or another”.

The key thing, he said, was to raise awareness among the student body, who will be the drivers of change.

T-level courses, introduced in 2020, cover a range of courses from accounting and legal services to land management and construction, with 20 per cent of the time spent on work experience. A T-level is the vocational equivalent of three A-levels.