The first report of the Chief Rabbi’s Schools review, which has just been published, is written with admirable clarity and cogency, setting out the challenges for formal education in mainstream Orthodoxy for the next decade and beyond. As the Chief Rabbi has said, we in the UK are in a “blessed” situation where the state meets 85 per cent of the running costs of many of our schools.
But the provision of Jewish studies depends on voluntary parental contributions and, as the report details, these have worryingly dropped in the past few years. Barely half of parents in London and a third in Manchester at schools under the Chief Rabbi’s authority pay contributions and in no school does the proportion reach beyond 70 per cent. Some believe the current system “broken”.
Undoubtedly, the rise in the cost of living has hit household budgets and more Jewish families may be struggling to make ends meet than we recognise. But perhaps the reality of state support has made us too complacent and too few parents care enough to want to meet the extra cost.
If schools give children a good secular education and enough emotional attachment to become active members of the Jewish community in future, some parents may be perfectly content. But if we want children to emerge from Jewish schools with a strong foundation in Jewish history, religious texts and Hebrew, with the tools to navigate a 3,000-year old civilisation, then we are going to have to find a way to invest in it. The Chief Rabbi has made it his aim to “raise the bar” for Jewish schooling and in that, he deserves every support.
