Plans afoot for first Jewish vocational sixth form college in north London

The Anglican priest who was headteacher of JCoSS until last month has outlined ambitious plans to open the UK’s first vocational Jewish sixth-form college in Barnet.

Patrick Moriarty is fighting for the first faith-based T-levels centre in the country after a successful spell as headteacher at the 1,335-pupil Jewish cross-denominational secondary school, which includes a 350-pupil sixth form. T-level are relatively new qualifications launched by the government in 2020.

Speaking to Schools Week, he explained how the centre – which he dubs ‘JV6’ – would help the less academic Jewish pupils who he feels are being let down by the current set-up and parents’ tunnel-vision focus on careers in the professions.

“I’ve watched some of the most wonderful, vulnerable members of the school community, often with special educational needs, having to leave at the age of 16, sometimes for the first time going into education outside the Jewish community, and it’s a real shock to their systems,” he said.

“I know this from some really painful cases. They feel it as a personal rejection by the school and the community. They feel that ‘just because I don’t want to be a doctor, lawyer or accountant, you’re turning your back on me’.

“That never felt right to me. There is a sector of people for whom university is not the right thing, so let’s provide an attractive alternative… I want to make technical and vocational education sexy, and at the moment it’s not.”

Moriarty, who was JCoSS head while Business Secretary Grant Shapps’ children studied there, said the qualifications have both financial and political support, including a committed £180,000 from two Jewish philanthropic trusts.

He said the Jewish community’s “cohesion, demography and employment patterns” means that it is “brilliantly placed to make T-levels work”, adding that “Israel is an absolute powerhouse for technological innovation and Jewish communities have the ability to draw on that”.

Moriarty, who said that a Jewish T-levels centre was “well placed” to build partnerships with employers, also said today’s parental obsession with academic achievement was not shared by previous generations of Jewish immigrants.

By way of example, he cited how – at the school’s annual “grandparents’ day”, older Jewish relatives would recall how they “left school at 14 to work as taxi drivers or in the rag trade”. He said: “Why are we now saying ‘actually, only the professions will do?’ That bothers me.”

While each individual Jewish school did not have enough such pupils to warrant their own vocational sixth forms, there were certainly enough across all Jewish schools in Barnet to make post-16 level two courses sustainable, he said.

The proposed Jewish Vocational Sixth Form College (JV6) would specialise in “white collar vocational” subjects such as media, health and social care, digital and business, said Moriarty, who is currently conducting a feasibility study.

Following that, he will submit a bid to the Department for Education to open a 16-19 free school offering T-levels, with 23 courses rolled out by 2024. He hopes to launch JV6 from JCoSS, before moving pupils to new facilities in Barnet the following year.

Some details are yet to be decided, he said, such as how the Jewish ethos of the centre would be maintained.

“Some want full-blooded Jewish textual-based education because they’ve been doing two hours of Talmud every morning and it’s important to them to carry on,” he said.

“How do we fit that with people for whom their Jewish identity is important, but they don’t want to study it? And to get all that to cohere in one institution?”