The JC Leader: Growing pains for schools, and freedom to preach for a wayward vicar

JFS is already the largest Jewish school in Europe — and, with well over 2000 pupils, one of the largest schools in the country. And JCoSS admits 180 pupils a year, now expanded to a bulge class of 210.

They have now announced plans to expand even more, adding 90 places a year to cope. With rising demand for Jewish school places, there is clearly a rationale. And yet it is far from convincing.

There is a limit to the number of pupils a school can properly cope with. And most of the unmet demand comes — and will do so, increasingly — from areas like Hertfordshire, where the Jewish community has grown out of all recognition in recent decades.

Neither JFS nor JCoSS are on sites that could be described as near to this extra demand, but the proposed new free school is — and with it and the expansion of JFS and JCoSS, we may well end up with an oversupply of places. That, of itself, is not necessarily a problem. But the continual expansion of JFS and JCoSS almost certainly is.