The second reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and School’s Bill has drawn a fresh round of protests that have been both feverish and tone-deaf.
London protests were mirrored by parallel demonstrations at the British Consulate in New York, with protesters wearing black and white scrubs reminiscent of concentration camp uniforms. One widely circulated explainer of the draft Bill drew a sickening comparison between the Nazi practice of tattooing numbers on the arms of Jewish people and the Bill’s intention to allocate single unique identifiers to children, which will enable health, education, and other public services to work together to safeguard children.
The previous government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the lack of regulation of unregistered educational settings – which Charedi yeshivas largely are – leaves children vulnerable to abuse. But extremist elements of our community are attempting to persuade the government to ignore these findings, brandishing the only card they have: religious exceptionalism.
Yehudis Fletcher
Determined to prevent children from accessing a basic, secular education, crowds of Charedi men and boys outside parliament have repeated calls for a bill that has children’s wellbeing at its heart, in order to undermine the wellbeing and prevent the safeguarding of Charedi children. This dismal situation should invite the urgent and critical attention of the wider Jewish community.
The regulatory improvements that this Bill provides, as they pertain to Charedi children, are simple: Yeshivas will no longer be able to continue to claim that they are not schools, despite being places of education for children of school age, and will be required to register, bringing children into line of sight of safeguarding authorities. In addition, the Bill proposes a register of homeschooled children.
It makes provisions for local authorities to ensure that parents who are genuinely educating their children at home are free to continue to exercise that right. There are also provisions to identify those who are cynically claiming to do so, when their children are, in fact, spending long days studying exclusively religious studies with no access to maths, English, or science education.
Yeshivas run on schedules that do not plausibly allow for adequate home education once the Yeshiva day has ended, even for parents who are inclined to arrange it.
This dismal situation should invite the urgent and critical attention of the wider Jewish community
Home education has long been the go-to, if implausible, explanation rolled out to explain how Charedi parents whose children are not on any school register are fulfilling their legal duty to educate their children. But those who assert that children are genuinely being homeschooled rely on challengers being inhibited in further investigating such obvious inconsistencies. They also rely on the rest of the Jewish community, who would never accept their own children suffering the indignity of such neglect, not being willing or confident enough to draw attention to the way Charedi children are treated.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is urgent and it does what it says on the tin: it ensures the wellbeing of all children, including Charedi children. The Bill ensures they are known to the authorities, so that they can be certain that these children have proper access to education. There is nothing controversial about supporting it. Those who ask you not to are relying on you doing a cost benefit analysis in which you attach less value to the wellbeing of Charedi children than you do to smooth inter- and intra-community relations.
What the “Yellow Star” protestors want you to forget is that ordinary Charedi parents want their children to have access to adequate schooling, but the social cost of expressing this desire is extremely high
What the “Yellow Star” protestors want you to forget is that ordinary Charedi parents want their children to have access to safe, adequate schooling, but that the social cost of even expressing this desire has intentionally been made extremely high. It is simply not safe for Charedi parents to say, out loud or in writing, that they want their children to be educated in a Jewish school where they learn as much about their faith as possible, whilst simultaneously receiving a broad and balanced secular education. On the day of the second reading, a Charedi father of eight with children in yeshivas and Charedi (registered, independent) primary schools texted me to say: “Most people want the changes, but we are scared and silenced. We are under tight control, with no freedom and no ability to voice independent opinions”.
The control this man speaks of is by design and, I argue, testifies to the lack of faith that Charedi leaders photographed protesting at the second reading have in their own rhetoric: it appears they do not believe that anyone able to make an educated choice would actually stay within the community.
