OPINION: A step in the right direction for educational reform

Last week, a bill was proposed in Parliament to establish a register for ‘Children Not in School’ by Tory MP Flick Drummond. The proposed register was originally to have been part of the Johnson government’s now abandoned School’s Bill, so its premise is familiar, and it is good to see it back on the legislative agenda.

Every year, thousands of Chasidic parents send their sons to Yeshivas, where they learn no maths, no English, and where there is no safeguarding oversight. If challenged, the parents will claim the boys are home-schooled, but the boys are in fact attending Yeshivas full time.

They can’t be in two places at once. This Bill is not a complete solution to the broader problem of Charedi education; but it nevertheless goes some way towards removing the fig leaf upon which parents and leaders rely. In short, it is a step in the right direction.

On the day that the Bill passed its first reading, a group of Charedi men stood holding protest placards accusing the government of antisemitism. These men – and unsurprisingly, it is invariably men – wilfully misinterpret any attempts to ensure that their sons are literate and numerate and instead allege that any State intervention is ‘an attack on Torah education’.

Far from being an attack that will harm or disadvantage Jewish children, this Bill should be welcomed by the community at large. Here is an opportunity to ensure that all Jewish children count.

The cry of antisemitism is patently false. The Bill, if it reaches the statute books, will ensure all children are registered with their local authority; a step towards ensuring that the education children receive, whether at home or at school, will be adequate.

Whilst this Bill does not cover curriculum content, either at home or in schools, that doesn’t stop its opponents from accusing the government of ‘taking away their (parental) freedom to choose how their children get educated.’ Parental freedom is already limited; the parental right is to decide which (registered) school they’d like their child to attend, or if they would prefer the option of home-schooling their child.

All this Bill does is require the parents set out whether their child is, in fact, home schooled. But a register will make it easier for local authorities to check on the quality of the home-schooling. In many cases, when they do, and within the Chasidic community in particular, education will be found not simply to be deficient, but non-existent.

Those men who restrict their children’s futures, and hold on so tightly to the reins of control, are railing against free will itself – the basic tenet through which we earn the merit to enter the ‘World to Come’.

This Bill could be transformational for boys in the Chasidic community whose current education leaves them without basic literacy and numeracy skills, unable to lead autonomous, dignified lives as adults.

Of course, they help themselves to the freedom our democracy provides, and are free to congregate and protest. I say, let them! Let them proclaim their bigotry and their extremism for all to see. I prefer it this way, it means I can spend less time convincing others how extreme their beliefs really are, and what children are exposed to without legislative reform on Yeshiva education.

It means that the rest of the Jewish community can make an informed choice about where we stand. With the children, who are kept in a situation of enforced dependency, because of the denial to them of education? Or with those whose grasp on the reigns of communal power rests on their power to deny that education?

This Bill could be transformational for boys in the Chasidic community whose current education leaves them without basic literacy and numeracy skills, unable to lead autonomous, dignified lives as adults. The men protesting, and the more senior leaders at home providing tacit support, are opposed to that.

Educational neglect is not a phrase to which many of the Jewish community would relate. We think of ourselves as ‘the People of the Book’; we don’t like to think about the 30 year old Chasidic man who cannot express himself in written English, who doesn’t have the autonomy to choose anything different for his sons. We don’t pay enough attention to this growing illiteracy in our community, promoted and paid for through a grey economy that will go on to trap its graduates in a humiliating inter-generational cycle of benefit fraud and undeclared income.

Flick Drummond told Parliament that she believes parents have the right to choose what education their child receives, and that right should always be enshrined in law. No one is looking to prevent Jewish children from learning Torah – but the current situation cannot continue. The Bill received cross-party backing in its first reading last week (and will receive its second reading in November). It has Nahamu’s support. Does it have yours?

• Yehudis Fletcher is a Charedi campaigner and founder of Nahamu.