OPINION: Condemning successful Jewish schools is itself a fundamentalist act
Shimon Cohen argues that while the state school system is in deep crisis, an anti-faith lobby group has sought to condemn flourishing faith schools
The National Secular Society has just published yet another tirade against two charedi independent faith schools, Beis Ruchel D’Satmar in London and Ahavas Torah in Manchester. Let us be clear: this is not about education. This is about their crusade against religion.
The NSS is an openly anti-faith lobby group. On its own website it boasts of campaigns to “end state funding for faith schools” and “abolish collective worship in schools.” They are not educationalists. They are not child-protection specialists. They are an anti-religion campaign body, as fundamentalist in their faith for a secular Britain as the most fervently religious are about their faith.
The ongoing dialogue between charedi schools and the Government and Ofsted, which I have played a role in for decades, is perhaps well-known. It is not about safeguarding. It is not about whether our schools teach English, maths or science. It is about a narrow, politically-loaded and artificial creation of a hierarchy of Protected Characteristics. We frankly will not teach all of them, and the law is not as clear-cut as the NSS pretends.
Beis Ruchel meets the Independent School Standards in every respect save one: they do not teach those few Protected Characteristics that conflict with traditional Jewish values. That is all.
Beis Ruchel, with over 1,000 pupils, is regarded by Ofsted itself as a school where “pupils are happy, safe and well looked after.” Safeguarding is effective. Behaviour is good. Girls achieve well in their GCSEs. They receive careers advice suited, as the law proscribes, to their particular community. They learn respect, tolerance, and the fundamental British values of kindness, democracy, and law. What they do not learn is the theology of other religions, nor are they taught about intimate lifestyles in the classroom. Lessons just do not go there.
The NSS notes how “the headteacher supervised inspectors” when they questioned children about “relationships.” Of course the headteacher did that. We have catalogued insulting. inappropriate and even unlawful conduct by inspectors and other official personal in schools. So teacher supervision during such inspector interviews, or dare I say interrogations, is necessary, to protect the pupils’ wellbeing from inappropriate behaviour.
Meanwhile, the state system is in deep crisis. Standards are collapsing. Violence, knife crime, and the scourge of social media overload and internet abuse are rife in schools. As Professor Jonathan Haidt has shown, the “phone-based childhood” has driven a dramatic collapse in adolescent mental health worldwide. Rates of teenage depression, self-harm, and loneliness have soared since smartphones became universal. In Britain, knife crime reached a record high in 2024, with over 49,000 offences recorded by police, while reports of sexual harassment and bullying in schools linked to social media also continues to climb.
Yet the NSS, in its mission for a better, modern Britain, chooses to vilify safe and successful communities where parents and pupils thrive. The charedi community is a minority community that is largely free from screens, social media, and smartphones, and that boasts a strong family and communal structure to raise children. These are characteristics which should be celebrated, not vilified; protected not persecuted.
Leave charedi schools alone. Our faith schools are flourishing. That is the fact, however hard it is for anti-faith campaigners to accept.
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