Admissions regulator partly upholds complaint against IJDS

The Independent Jewish Day School in Hendon is the latest Jewish school to have to revise its admissions policy after the Office of the Schools Adjudicator partly upheld a complaint against it.

State-aided schools are allowed to select children on the basis of religious practice but requirements have to comply with the School Admissions Code’s conditions that they are objective, clear and fair.

Over the past decade, many Jewish schools have had to amend their policies after complaints made to the entry watchdog.

IJDS, a modern Orthodox primary, asks parents to fill in a form about their observance of kashrut, Shabbat and Yom Tov, tefillah (prayer), learning and tzniut (modest dress) and provide a reference from a rabbi.

The adjudicator Ann Talboys rejected a number of aspects of the complaint submitted by a member of the public against IJDS’s arrangements for entry next autumn. But she ruled that she did “not consider it objective or clear to parents that the rabbi is asked to confirm some of the religious observance elements… when he is unable to see and experience them.”

She also found that a question asking applicants whether they identified with the school’s religious ethos to be contrary to a prohibition in the admissons codes’ against asking parents “to agree to support the ethos of the school in a practical way”.

The school told the adjudicator it would remove the question.

Its solicitors told her that the school “intends to amend its admissions arrangements to ensure the criteria allowing priority with reference to faith… are clear and fair.”

The adjudicator said, “By asking the rabbi to confirm only those elements of the religious observance for which he has first-hand evidence, then this will render the arrangements much clearer”.