Jewish Schools in London: The List, and How Admissions Work

Few things unsettle a relocating Israeli parent like the school question. The words are different, the starting age is different, and the logic does not map onto the one you grew up with. The good news is twofold: north-west London has one of the richest clusters of Jewish schools anywhere outside Israel, and most of them are free. Here is how the system works, then the schools by area, then the part that actually decides whether you get a place.

The system is not the one you left

Start with the biggest surprise. Children here start school younger, and their year group is decided by a birthday rather than by a choice you get to make.

• Reception starts at 4. The first year of primary school is called Reception, and children begin it the September after they turn 4. Full-time schooling is legally required a little later, but almost everyone starts in Reception.
• The year group is fixed by date of birth. The school year runs September to August, so a summer-born child is the youngest in the class. Israeli parents used to a later and more flexible start often find their child placed a year ahead of where they would have been. Moving a child out of their birth year group is possible in principle but requires the agreement of the admission authority and is not something you can simply request.
• The ladder is simple once you see it. Primary is Reception to Year 6. Secondary is Year 7 to Year 11, then an optional sixth form covering Years 12 and 13. The two big exam points are GCSEs at the end of Year 11 and A-Levels at the end of sixth form. Several Jewish secondaries run all the way through.
• Three terms, not two semesters. Autumn, Spring and Summer, each with a short half-term break in the middle. Jewish schools also close for the chagim, so their calendar differs from a non-faith school’s, which is worth checking against your own work leave before you choose.
• The everyday shape is different too. Uniform is standard rather than unusual, the school day runs from the morning to the middle of the afternoon with wraparound care often available for a fee, and there is no school on Sunday. Infant-age children in state schools in England receive free school meals, which is one cost you can take out of the budget.

Free or fee-paying, and what the labels mean

Two questions get tangled in England that are really separate: who runs and funds the school, and how religious it is. For your budget, only the first one matters. State-funded schools are free. Independent schools charge fees and you apply to them directly rather than through the council.

The happy headline for Israeli families is that the large, well-known Jewish schools in the Barnet area are overwhelmingly state-funded and free. State-funded comes in a few types (voluntary aided, academy, free school) that differ in the admissions small print rather than in whether you pay, and a school can convert from one type to another over time. Treat any label you read as current rather than permanent, and confirm each school’s status when it matters.

One naming trap to note. The Independent Jewish Day School (IJDS) in Hendon is a state-funded school, not a fee-paying private one, despite the name. Do not assume “Independent” means private. Separately, the strictly-Orthodox (Charedi) community runs its own network of mostly independent, often single-sex schools, which you approach directly rather than through the council process described below. Unless that is specifically what you are looking for, the cross-communal and modern-Orthodox schools are the ones to start with.

The schools, by area

North-west London is where the community, and its schools, concentrate. A few are worth calling out before the table. JCoSS in New Barnet is a cross-communal, pluralist Jewish secondary welcoming families from every stream. JFS in Kenton is a large modern-Orthodox co-educational secondary. Hasmonean runs single-sex Orthodox secondaries, boys in Hendon and girls in Mill Hill. Akiva in Finchley is a Progressive (Reform) Jewish primary. And watch the names: the Menorah Foundation School in Edgware and the Menorah Primary Schools Federation in Golders Green are two different schools that happen to share a name.

Area	Schools
Golders Green	Menorah Primary Schools Federation (primary)
Hendon	Hasmonean Boys (secondary), IJDS (primary)
Edgware	Rosh Pinah, Menorah Foundation (primary)
Finchley	Akiva, Sacks Morasha, Alma (primary)
Mill Hill	Hasmonean Girls (secondary), Mathilda Marks-Kennedy, Etz Chaim (primary)
Borehamwood	Yavneh College (secondary), Yavneh Primary
New Barnet / Kenton	JCoSS, JFS (secondary, drawing from across the area)

School names, admissions rules and a school’s legal status all shift over time, so confirm the current picture with each school and with your council before you rely on any single detail. Note also that these areas do not all sit in one council. Schools in and around Borehamwood are in Hertfordshire rather than a London borough, and the boundaries between Barnet, Brent and Harrow run through the middle of the community, so check which authority runs the process for the school you want.

How the application actually works

This is the section that decides the outcome, and it is procedural rather than difficult.

You apply through your own local council, the one you pay council tax to, even for a school in a different borough. There is one common application form listing several ranked preferences. Ranking a school second or third never counts against you at that school, so there is no tactical advantage in dishonest ordering, and listing only one school is the most common self-inflicted wound in the whole process.

Timing is fixed nationally. The secondary deadline falls in the autumn of the year before entry and the primary deadline in January, with offers for both arriving on a single national offer day in the spring. Late applications are dealt with after every on-time one, which in practice is the difference between a real choice and whatever is left.

Then the piece almost nobody is told about. Faith schools that use faith criteria almost always require a separate supplementary information form, sent directly to the school, in addition to the council form. Missing it does not mean your application fails, it means you are ranked as though you had no faith claim at all. If you are applying to a faith school, ask that school directly what it needs from you and by when, and do not rely on the council form alone.

Every state school publishes its own admission arrangements setting out how it ranks applicants when there are more of them than places. Read the actual document for the schools you want, because it is the only authoritative answer to how they will treat your family.

Faith criteria, and what they ask of a family that has just arrived

Where a Jewish school has more applicants than places, faith criteria are what rank them, and this is where Israeli families most often hit something they did not expect.

Many Orthodox schools use a Certificate of Religious Practice, which assesses things like synagogue involvement and prior Jewish education. Different streams judge Jewish commitment differently, so a Reform school, a cross-communal one and a United Synagogue Orthodox school are not applying the same test, and none of them is applying the test you would expect from an Israeli frame of reference.

The practical problem for a new arrival is timing rather than substance. Faith criteria of this kind typically look at a period before the application, which a family that has just landed does not yet have here. If a faith place matters to you, this is the reason to start asking schools what they will want long before you are ready to apply, rather than discovering it in the application year. The schools themselves are the right people to ask, and they are used to the question.

Two further things are true of every state school in England, faith or not. Looked-after and previously looked-after children come first in every set of oversubscription criteria, before anything else. And once faith criteria have been applied, remaining places are usually ranked on published factors such as siblings already at the school and distance from it.

Alongside Ofsted, which inspects state schools generally, the religious side of a faith school is inspected separately, so there are usually two reports rather than one and they tell you different things.

If you miss the round, or arrive mid-year

Plenty of families arrive at the wrong point in the year. There is a route for that, and knowing how it works is worth a lot.

• In-year admissions are a separate, rolling process for whatever places exist right now, run through the council and the schools. Contact them directly, in writing, and early. Flag that you are relocating and give the date you will actually be in the country.
• Waiting lists are ranked by the school’s published criteria, not by when you joined them. This surprises everyone. A family that applies after you can be placed above you, and your position can move down as well as up. It also means it is always worth being on the list.
• You have a right to appeal a refusal to an independent panel. One thing to know before you invest hope in it: for infant classes, meaning Reception to Year 2, there is a legal limit on class size, and appeals at that stage succeed only on narrow grounds. Appeals at other stages are a more open argument.
• If nothing can be found, the council has a duty to secure a school place for a child of compulsory school age, and there is a formal process behind that. You are not left with nothing.
• Children arriving without English are supported at school as learners of English as an additional language, and primary-age children in particular tend to pick it up faster than their parents find believable.
• If your child has additional needs, the assessment and support process runs through the council, and a formal plan carries specific rights about which school is named. Several Jewish charities work in exactly this area, and our guide to Jewish charities in London is the starting point for finding them.

Keeping Hebrew alive

The worry that a child will lose their Hebrew is one Israeli parents feel keenly, and there are two clear routes depending on where your child goes to school.

At a Jewish school, Ivrit is usually built in. Most teach two kinds of Hebrew: the classical Hebrew of Jewish studies, and Modern Hebrew taught much the way French or Spanish is taught elsewhere. So spoken Hebrew keeps ticking over while religious Hebrew is added on top. Whether Modern Hebrew continues all the way to GCSE varies between schools, so ask each one.

At a non-Jewish state school, the classic route is cheder, supplementary Jewish education usually on Sunday mornings and run by synagogues. It covers Hebrew reading, the festivals, history and the run-up to Bar and Bat Mitzvah, and many chedarim run a Modern Hebrew strand too. Private tutors and the Hebrew classes running around London fill in the rest.

The honest thing to add is that neither route does the work on its own. Children raised here understand Hebrew long after they stop answering in it, and what keeps a child speaking is Hebrew being the language of real relationships, with grandparents, cousins and the people around a Friday table, rather than the language of a lesson.

The map and the community are the same map

No list of school names replaces talking to parents who have just done this. That is the quiet advantage of arriving into a community: someone two streets over applied last year, knows which open evening is worth your time, and will tell you over coffee.

If you have only just landed, start with the practical basics and let the school question settle, and note that choosing an area is partly a schools decision, which is worth keeping in mind while you are working out where to live. Family days and holiday afternoons across the London calendar are also where a lot of parents meet each other, which is how the informal answers get passed on.

And when you are ready to ask the real questions, the ones no council website answers, the community is where you ask them. Come to a Friday dinner. Someone at the table has been exactly where you are.