London – The United Kingdom’s education regulatory department Ofsted (Office for Standards in Educaiton) is being criticized by the National Association for Jewish Schools for failing a Jewish school in London’s Golders Green area.
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Talmud Torah Tiferes Shlomoh was deemed a failing school by Ofsted, which stated the school spends too much time teaching Jewish religious studies, according to Ham & High (http://bit.ly/1O6QcdI).
Ofsted rated the school as “good” in 2010 and 2007 in regards to its standard of education, but after an inspection in January of this year, the school was dropped to “inadequate.”
According to Ofsted, the school does not teach students basic skills like spelling, grammar and punctuation, and students lack fluency in reading English because they mostly learn to read in Hebrew. The report also stated that students were not prepared overall for life in modern-day Britain because they are limited to learning about a restricted set of secular subjects and are shielded from learning about drugs, sex or sexual orientation.
The National Association for Orthodox Jewish Schools says Ofsted has a history of harshly rating religious Jewish schools. Executive director Jonathan Rabson said that they have stated before that inspectors use “insensitive” and “inappropriate” questions when inspecting religious schools. And that the department doesn’t understand the religious context of the schools and judges them by secular standards.
Golders Green parliamentary candidate Mike Freer stated that faith schools do a good job with their education, but they do have to prepare students for the real world.
The school for boys aged 3 to 15 is rated highly by parents and the Jewish community.
Who decides what the “:real world” is?
how do the children rate as adults in the English society as a burden to the government, with arrest, drugs, uneployment
Kol hakovod to the UK education regulatory department for doing what U.S. and Israeli education officials have miserably failed to do and that is to enforce minimal education standards for ALL children. Until the ehrliche yidden of Golders Green, Kiryas Joel, Bnai Brak etc. formally relinquish any claim for government handouts and welfare from the families of the poorly educated and dysfunctional graduates of these schools, the government has every right to demand the schools at least give these kids a chance to earn a parnassah. Its mamash child abuse to deny the kids a minimal basic education. No one is suggesting “equal time” for secular subjects but basic proficiency in language and mathematical skills and social awareness is non-negotiable.
“Ofsted said the school does not teach pupils basic skills such as spelling, grammar and punctuation. Pupils mostly learn to read in Hebrew and lack fluency in reading English as a result, the inspector said.
Pupils only learn a restricted set of secular subjects and are “shielded” from learning about sex, drugs or sexual orientation, the inspector wrote.”
While I can hear that a Charedi school would want to shield the children from learning about sex and drugs and rock ‘n roll, there is absolutely no excuse for not teaching spelling, grammar and punctuation. For the National Association for Orthodox Jewish Schools to pretend that this is part of some anti-faith school crusade is disingenuous to say the least.
As a Brit, let me say that it may well be they had an issue with chol standards BUT since the Trojan Horse scandal where Muslim schools were teaching extremism, they completely overreached the other way and attacked ALL faith schools. A number of excellent, not even that frum, Jewish schools have been downgraded for ridiculous things. And the inspectors do display total insensitivity; they went into Beis Yaakov and asked the girls why they didn’t have boyfriends or know about homosexuality… or they think if you are not on the internet you are deprived… there is a bigger issue here don’t think it’s so simple.
Enhancing the mind and fine tuning the ability to adapt, apply, and innovate, are learning tools that are glossed over when secular evaluators determine the ability of Chasidishe students.
Our children all speak three or four languages by the time they are twelve years old, having mastered Yiddish, Hebrew, Aramaic and English. Emphasis on English is weak only at first, because they learn it AFTER Yiddish and Hebrew.
Those “judges” and “evaluators” compare our kids to theirs who only learn one language all day, every day.
Our children are prepared to meet a world filled with evil,urder, hatred, bigotry and ignorance.
How dare they judge our children’s ability to face the evil those judges created?