Pupils at Charedi schools outnumbers Jewish kids in secular Jewish schools

The number of Jewish children attending Jewish schools is expected to hit about 40,000 by 2025, mainly due to growth in Charedi pupil numbers.

That’s according to a new document from London-based think-tank, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).

The new research, ‘A Jewish or a non-Jewish school: What lies behind parents’ decisions about how to educate their children?’, looks into Jewish education in the UK and the rest of Europe.

It aims to highlight parents’ different motives when choosing a Jewish or non-Jewish school for their children.

Some of the key findings, written by JPR executive director Dr Jonathan Boyd include:

1. The number of Jewish children attending Jewish schools has increased significantly over time and is expected to reach about 40,000 by the mid-2020s.

2. Developing a strong Jewish identity is a huge driver for parents in the UK, France and across Europe for registering their children to a Jewish school

3. Jewish identity is followed in most places by a desire for their children to have friends with similar values, with the exception of France, where concern about antisemitism in non-Jewish schools is a more common motive.

4. In the UK and France, the most common motive for parents to send their children to a non-Jewish school is actively preferring a non-Jewish (integrated) environment, cited by about two-thirds of all such parents in both countries.

Convenience also commonly features as a reason not to send children to a Jewish school, coming second on the list in the UK and France and topping it elsewhere in Europe.

Academic standards and availability are also marked highly as reasons parents prefer a non-Jewish school for their children, particularly in the UK.

Dr Boyd said: “To ensure that parents are able to secure places for their children in their preferred schools, community planners must have access to the latest data on Jewish school enrolment numbers and the motives underpinning parental choice.

He added that while the paper shares “some of what we currently know”, there is an urgent need for more community investment in this type of research in order to “accurately project levels of demand for Jewish schooling in the years to come.”

In the mid-1950s, 5,200 Jewish children were registered as pupils in Jewish schools; by the mid-1990s that number had risen to 16,700. Between 2015 and 2016, the figure rose to 32,000.

The paper draws data from three sources: previous JPR research on school registration numbers, a 2018 pan-European study sponsored by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), conducted by a joint JPR-Ipsos team, and JPR’s spring 2023 survey of Jews in the UK.

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