Last month, hundreds of children started in the reception class at their local Jewish primary schools.

In 1841, when the Jewish Chronicle was launched, most children in England did not go to school at all.

That was all about to change: 1841 was the year that the School Site Act was passed, allowing for parliamentary grants for “education of the poor”.

This, and the acts that followed it, finally led to the Forster Act in 1870, which paved the way for free, compulsory education for all five- to 13-year-olds. This was highly unpopular, because millions of children in England were needed by their parents to go to work, to contribute to the family income.

The situation was very different in the Jewish community, for whom Jewish education has been a communal responsibility for more than 2,000 years.

We know that even as far back as our biblical ancestor Jacob, wherever a Jewish community was established, a school would follow. Jewish day school education has been established in England since the Jews were officially readmitted to this country in 1656. Straight away, schools were set up.

The Talmud Torah of the Great Synagogue of London opened in 1732. We know that school by its other name, JFS. At one point, JFS had 4,000 students, making it the largest school in the world.

By 1850, Jewish schools had opened all over the country, and their continuation was assured when, in March 1853, the Manchester Jews’ school received state funding, putting Jewish schools on an equal footing with Christian schools. Two years later, Jews College – now the London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS) – was founded, providing training for rabbis and teachers.

But Jewish schools have had periods of popularity and periods of struggle. From the 1880s until the beginning of the First World War, mass immigration from Eastern Europe caused the Jewish population in England to rise by some 100,000 people. But the numbers of children in the Jewish schools started to decline. In 1880, 60 per cent of Jewish children were in Jewish schools, but by 1911, the figure had dropped to only 25 per cent. Gradually, the balance of Jewish children moved to the national Board schools.

The demise of the Jish schools was due to a practical consideration: it was important both to the immigrant families and the indigenous Jewish population for the Eastern European Jews to blend in as fast as possible.

As early as 1911, Reverend S. Levy told the Conference of Anglo Jewish ministers that the national system of free and compulsory education was enabling these immigrants “to acquire English habits of thought and character”. In other words, these Jewish children needed to integrate, and quickly.

Whilst integration was encouraged, assimilation was not. A fully-developed system of supplementary education took place in classes attached to synagogues and schools, and funded by Jewish philanthropists. Pupils attended evening classes to learn Jewish knowledge and Hebrew.

Through the 1950s to the 1980s, Jewish education was struggling: 80 per cent of Jewish children did receive some Jewish education, usually for a few hours on a Sunday morning.

Education, but not Jewish education, was of prime importance to Jewish parents, the means to escape from a lower economic class into the middle classes. Saturday mornings became the time for ballet and piano lessons, not for synagogue and community. Assimilation was replacing integration.

In 1994, then-chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote a compelling study of Jewish continuity. He identified the “fourth generation”, that generation of Jews who had lived in England for many years and were so far removed from their family traditions that they saw little relevance in an integrated Jewish life.

Sacks berated the community for lacking an overall strategy in education. His was a wake-up call and led to the revitalisation and development of Jewish schools and schooling.

Today’s Jewish schools cater to more than 60 per cent of Jewish children in England. They are state-of-the-art institutions, and government-aided, thanks to the relationship of the State and Church in England, going back 180 years.

As this year’s primary school intake settled into their reception classes, they were unaware of the shifting historical trends that have allowed them the privilege of a full-time Jewish education, and enabled them to take their place in the story of Jewish continuity.

Helena Miller is the Director of Degrees, co-Head of Teacher Training and Senior Research Fellow at LSJS