Stamford Hill’s Charedi protesters have a new tactic to fight yeshiva regulation: hip hop.
A music video released by the Scrap The Schools Bill campaign shows an unidentified musician performing over a trap beat.
"What you ‘gon do with them school bills, we 'gon scrap them,” he sings.
“I know what's best for me and mine. What you gonna do with them school bills, we 'gon scrap them. School bills gotta go."
The Schools Bill, designed to increase government control of education, has sparked a furious reaction in some quarters of the Charedi community.
If the legislation is passed, yeshivot would be treated as independent schools and made to teach some secular subjects, including LGBT awareness as part of relationships and sex education.
A string of protests outside parliament have seen demonstrators rail against what they claim is the government’s attempt to suppress religious freedom.
At one, protestor Chaim Sofer told the JC: “The Bill would not allow Jews to practise our law in our schools. If this law is passed, Jews will not be able to live here. I am a British patriot but we cannot accept this.”
As the Conservative party meet in Birmingham, strictly Orthodox campaigners are hopeful they can sway Kit Malthouse, the new Education Secretary.
After Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng u-turned on the abolition of the top rate of tax, Rabbi Asher Gratt, who has been involved in organising protests, told the JC: “Our new government has today shown how they are responsive to public sentiment.
“Having represented numerous organisations and thousands of parents nationwide in the campaign about the attempted micro-management of UK's education, I can convey that they await with bated breath for a formal announcement that the disastrous Schools Bill has been scrapped.”
Alongside rap music, the Charedi campaigners have also published a series of animated cartoons with a “The Scrap The Schools Bill” jingle.
One YouTube video shows cartoon figures outside Number 10 Downing Street holding signs that read: “Congratulations to our new Prime Minister Liz Truss! British parents are calling for the Schools Bill to be scrapped! Please scrap the schools bill."
Education policy experts have suggested the legislation indeed may be ditched by Liz Truss.
Sources close to the government believe the bill will be “diluted” or “scrapped” as it is not a priority of the new prime minister, the Times Educational Supplement reported last month.
Former Department for Education advisor Sam Freedman told the magazine: “There has been some noise that the bill might be pulled altogether, which would leave the whole system in limbo, so hopefully it isn’t true.”
