A Jewish or a non-Jewish school: What lies behind parents’ decisions about how to educate their children?

In this report:

As a new school year begins, this factsheet looks into Jewish education in the UK and the rest of Europe, highlighting parents’ different motives when choosing a Jewish or non-Jewish school for their children. The paper draws data from three sources: previous JPR research on school registration numbers, a 2018 pan-European study sponsored by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), conducted by a joint JPR-Ipsos team, and JPR’s spring 2023 survey of Jews in the UK.

Some of the key findings in this factsheet:

• The number of Jewish children attending Jewish schools has increased significantly over time and is expected to reach about 40,000 by the mid-2020s;
• In the UK, the number of children attending haredi (strictly Orthodox) schools outnumbers the number of Jewish children in mainstream Jewish schools by about three to two;
• Parents in the UK, France and across Europe are most likely to point to a desire for their children to develop strong Jewish identities as a motive for registering their children in a Jewish school;
• Parents also send their children to Jewish schools because they want them to have friends with similar values;
• Jews in France are more likely than Jews elsewhere to point to concerns about antisemitism in general schools as a motive for sending their children to Jewish schools;
• In the UK and France, the most common motive for parents to send their children to a non-Jewish school is actively preferring a non-Jewish ('integrated') environment, cited by about two-thirds of all such parents in both countries;
• Convenience also commonly features as a reason not to send children to a Jewish school, coming second on the list in the UK and France, and topping it elsewhere in Europe;
• Academic standards and availability are also marked highly as reasons parents prefer a non-Jewish school for their children, particularly in the UK.