Faith, hope and funding

After a long campaign, a strictly orthodox Jewish school has finally won state backing. But, asks Caroline Haydon, should taxpayers be supporting it?

Rabbi Abraham Pinter is busy fixing his phone with Sellotape. He's already mended the ancient photocopier straining away in the corner of the school office, and is now fielding mobile phone calls and queries from staff while talking.

One would have thought the chaos would make him miserable, but in fact he's extremely cheerful - because his Yesodey Hatorah girls' school in the heavily Jewish orthodox Stamford Hill, north London, has finally won voluntary-aided status. After a 20-year single-handed campaign waged by this energetic rabbi, Yesodey has finally won state funding and the school will come in from the cold.

For the senior girls who will be swapping old classrooms for a brand new building, it's very good news. Even to those used to our run-down school system, the physical condition of Yesodey Hatorah comes as a shock. Decades of permanent financial crisis - the school is private but doesn't turn away those who can't pay - have left it threadbare. Victorian buildings are patched together with crumbling extensions, and 20-year-old temporary structures look leaky. Black bin-bags billow from a classroom extension housing computers, and the brown-tinged decor and broken blinds put you in mind of the worst type of NHS waiting room. This isn't, on average, a prosperous community.

But from September, 2005, the senior girls will be moved out to a brand new 450-pupil, £13m school over the road, complete with up-to-date facilities for IT and gym. The nursery, boys' school and junior girls will stay, but at least they can spread out, and the worst of the classrooms refurbished, if there is the money.

Jewish schools are, of course, a long-standing feature of the British educational patchwork - there are now 33 of them. None the less, the addition of such a strictly orthodox Jewish school to the state sector does raise questions both about how it might fit, and whether schools should be paid for out of the public purse if they are not open to all.

Rabbi Pinter, Yesodey's gregarious principal, believes state funding is legitimate for his school, not least because it gets results: for the second year running, and despite its condition, it was rated the second most value-added school in the country for the GCSE year group. And he reckons that the sense of identity he gives his pupils equips them to be outstanding citizens in the wider community. "Where children are not given pride, identity and a sense of culture it's a disaster," he says. "You are getting disaffected white and black children whose background just happens to be Christian, or Muslim, or whatever it is. They have been let down.You have problems when you take away people's identity."

It is true, of course, that there are no race riots in Stamford Hill. Rabbi Pinter says the relationship between the local Muslim and Jewish communities is excellent, and what is not usually appreciated by the outsider is the diversity of the Jewish group itself. Yesodey was set up during the Second World War to cater for European refugees, and there are no fewer than 50 synagogues in a two-mile radius, each catering to a different community, but coming under the broad heading of the Charedi (practising orthodox but not modern) community. Rabbi Pinter, born in Stamford Hill of an Austrian father and a Polish mother, likes to point out that he is, in this sense, bringing separate communities together under one roof. But there are obvious questions about how the school can adapt to fit into the maintained sector.

It already has far longer hours than the average school - 8.30am to 4.30pm - so time taken out for daily prayers should not impinge on the curriculum. But a school which has had to reach agreement with an exam board that some texts for girls be excised because they are not allowed to see them, and where no pupil is allowed to watch television or surf the internet, is clearly going to be different.

Hackney's Learning Trust, the non-profit making company running the borough's education, is providing curriculum advice on the transfer. Principal secondary adviser Miriam Kerr says there are still areas, like sex education and behaviour policy, where issues have to be talked over. "But it's such an amazing school", she says. "You see young women who are learning and motivated. Some students are sitting exams early and they've had outstanding citizenship results. There are no conflicts at this stage in their move to the maintained sector." When the new building opens the school will have the resources to be able to deliver to national standards on subjects like design technology and physical education. As for IT, they're working on setting up an intranet.

Rabbi Pinter's wife now heads the girls' school, although she will step down when it transfers. Yesodey has run in the family - Pinter's father was head before he was, and Mrs Pinter is credited with bringing the girls' school up to its present standards. When she joined the school 17 years ago hardly any girls were taking O-levels - now they routinely take all subjects that the school can resource at GCSE level and then go on to traditional seminaries, where they can take A-levels. Some now move on to the Open University, which means they can study from home. The boys, at 15, take up Talmudic studies.

John Adler, an author and journalist who has written about the Charedi community, says that academic awards often go to the girls rather than boys, because they are given a more secular education. "The women are the backbone of the community. There is an emphasis on modesty and the way one conducts oneself. These communities feel threatened by the moral tenor of mainstream society - they are not puritanical, but they want to preserve their integrity".

There are parents who never go near any church who would have enormous sympathy with this view, if not perhaps the practical steps taken to safeguard the Stamford Hill young. But the existence of church schools in the state sector, particularly in inner cities, is controversial for one main reason - it means there cannot be an open door policy for all schools. That can leave angst-ridden parents who do not want a religious education for their children facing a choice, if that is the right word, between a church school with a restricted entry and an over-subscribed local school. The more faith schools there are, the more this is likely to happen, and schools like Yesodey, by definition, cannot cater for all.

Another person who knows Yesodey well, Labour London assembly member Meg Hillier, believes that because faith schools already exist, it is best to be pragmatic in allowing new schools to be set up where there is a viable school roll. "If Church of England and Catholic schools exist, what is the justification for not having Jewish or Muslim schools?" she says. The idea of separation is often overplayed - there are other ways children can mix outside school".

She also believes that if such schools are not allowed, some children from faiths which do not want to compromise their identity will simply miss out on education. The process of integrating them into the state sector means some negotiation is taking place - Rabbi Pinter says he feels the move at Yesodey is good in this respect. "I am bringing our community into the society", he says. "At the moment we are very insular."

But it is also a question of how far the state sector wants to fragment. The current tally (primary and secondary) is 4,720 Church of England schools; 2,074 Roman Catholic; 33 Jewish; 4 Muslim; one Greek Orthodox and one Seventh Day Adventist - all now receiving state funds. So where does it stop?

The Government says it isn't campaigning for more faith schools, and new ones have to be created with the agreement of the local community, a difficult concept in practice. It says that because we have acknowledged parents' wishes to educate their children in mainstream Christian schools, it is only right that parents of other faiths have similar opportunities.

The Schools Minister Stephen Twigg, who has visited Yesody, wasn't available to discuss the issue, though the Government's view that faith schools contribute to community cohesion by promoting inclusion and developing partnerships with other schools would certainly be hotly contested by some.

So the fragmentation continues. For Yesodey, a successful school serving its own community well, the current government strategy has paid off. But these are early days in the wider story.

education@independent.co.uk