Old area’s brand new primary care

Published in the Jewish Chronicle, May 25 2005

The stories of desperation are legion. Parents sobbing down the telephone; waiting-lists that never get shorter; head teachers driving to people’s homes, armed with tape measures, to calculate their exact distance from the school, just to work out which child gets in — and which will be kept out.

That is the picture for Jewish primary schools in London, facing huge demand and able to offer only limited supply. Rarely a JC goes by without another report featuring tearful parents and regretful teachers, all lam-enting the same situation: a drastic shortage of places.

In a way, this is a success story. There was a time when the big fear for Jewish schools was their survival. Parents seemed to prefer a non-Jewish, often private, education for their kids: it was only a minority who made the Jewish choice.

Now that trend has turned on its head. The combination of good results and a guiding ethos has made Jewish schools look more attractive. If parents are frank, they will also admit that a state Jewish primary school is often free of many of the social problems that may deter them from the rest of the state sector — without having to pay the wallet-shrinking fees of going private.

As it happens, a Jewish primary school is the choice I have made for my own children. I like the idea of my sons getting a basic grounding in their traditions and history each weekday, rather than learning about those things only on the side, on a Sunday morning.

This way, I reckon, they will regard their Jewishness as a seamless whole, running throughout their lives, rather than just existing in the separate realm of home and cheder. My hope is that what they learn at home and at school will complement each other. And, if I’m honest, if I can spare my kids the ordeal of Sunday-morning cheder, I think I’m doing them a favour.

“Well, lucky you,” says the parent stranded in Muswell Hill — one of the 40, 70 or 90 on a waiting-list for a primary place. “You must have bought a flat in the school car park to get a place. How else would you have managed it?”

The answer is that my older son goes to Simon Marks Jewish Primary School in Stoke Newington (with my younger son heading in the same direction). Here, as the bus conductors used to say, there’s still room for one or two more — which should be soothing balm to all those parents pulling out clumps of hair at the supposed shortage of places.

For Simon Marks is one of those gems of a Jewish institution. I can’t think of a warmer atmosphere anywhere in the Jewish community: open, welcoming and inclusive. The head is one of those inspiring leaders all schools need so badly; the teachers are skilled and loving, which is a rare combination, and the results only get better.

Best of all, the parents are passionately involved, constantly helping each other to help the school. The result is a genuine community.

There are some parents at Simon Marks who want to keep all this quiet: “Sssh,” they say, “otherwise everyone will want to come here.” They’re not keen to lose that unique, village-like atmosphere — or the small class-sizes.

My own view is that people who want a first-class Jewish primary education for their kids should be let in on the Simon Marks secret. Those people in Muswell Hill or Crouch End especially: climbing the walls because they cannot get into Wolfson Hillel in Southgate, they don’t realise a great school is just as near to them — and it’s called Simon Marks.

I have a sneaky feeling I know what’s holding them back. It might well be those two fateful words: Stoke Newington. For too many people, they conjure up images of the inner city rather than the leafy suburbs — not exactly the ideal terrain for the school run. They probably haven’t read the property pages recently, showing how Stoke Newington has transformed: the Observer recently named it the best place in the UK to be a parent.

But my hunch is that the reluctance goes even deeper. For Stoke Newington is associated in too many minds with the past. “Isn’t that where our grandparents came from? If they worked so hard to get out, why are we going back?”

The trouble with that kind of thinking is that it makes no sense. If every generation of Jews keeps believing it must head north from the place of their roots, today’s Radlett kids are going to move to St Albans, their children will move on to Hemel Hempstead — until the entire Jewish community ends up in Northampton.

No, we need to take a second look at the places we think we know. Stoke Newington has changed, just as Brooklyn, New York, is now full of restaurants and cafés rather than sweatshops and steam-presses.

Jewish professional families are moving into the area, attracted to a place where you can find affordable houses with decent-sized gardens, near a big, wide park — and still be a hop, skip and a jump from the City or the centre of London — and where you can get your kids into a fabulous Jewish primary school.

Well, you can at the moment…

Posted on May 25, 2005 10:19 AM

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