A Charedi private school was forced to close its doors for three days this week due to a financial black hole amid a growing VAT and business rates bill
Shiras Devorah, a girls’ school in Golders Green, has been severely affected by the growing financial pressure on private schools, particularly the imposition of VAT and business rates in the last Budget.
The school, which educates 98 girls aged 11 to 18, was closed from last Thursday and only reopened on Wednesday morning. Management said they could not afford to pay staff wages for those days.
It is believed to be the first time a Jewish school has been forced to shut due to the government’s new financial measures targeting private schools.
Chair of governors Akiva Adler told the JC the school was facing a “hard burden” financially.
“It is very hard to run a private school. We are a charity, not a business… Our aim is to give education to children,” he said.
Adler described the decision to close the school as drastic, and one the leadership had tried to avoid. “We are very upset to do such a thing. You only close a school in drastic times [because] it is not good for the children.
“Hopefully we can call ourselves responsible — at the forefront of everything we do is the wellbeing of the children. Even though we didn’t have all the money, we pushed to open today because we didn’t want to damage the children.”
He explained: “The school was closed from Thursday until today because we didn’t have the money to pay the teachers.” The school, which never opens on Shabbat, remained closed on Thursday, Monday and Tuesday.
In response, a fundraising campaign was launched within the strictly Orthodox community. Within 24 hours of the closure, the school had received a wave of pledges.
“We haven’t got to the goal we needed to get to, but we are more than halfway there.”
However, the future remains uncertain. “Who knows if we will have to close again,” Adler said, pleading for further support. “We urge the community to help. These are not easy days for children. We are providing a very good education for our children,” he claimed.
Adler, who runs two other Orthodox schools in London, said funding was more accessible for larger institutions, but the government’s policy has placed significant strain on all of his school.
“It’s put a big burden on charitable schools – it is a tax for people that do charity. We are not private schools that charge full tuition.”
Shiras Devorah also faced an additional challenge this year after an entire class of pupils was removed following a personal dispute involving a family registered with the school.
“We had last year a class, but a few parents gathered together and said if we accept this one pupil, they will not come. There was nothing wrong with the child, and the rabbinic authority decided it was ethically better not to have a class than to turn the child away.
“We’d rather not have a class than do something wrong like that. But, of course, losing a class in a school makes a financial impact.”
Shiras Devorah is also fundraising for a new building. A campaign for the project has raised £669,256, but speaking to the JC, Adler said the appeal had affected families’ ability to contribute to day-to-day costs. “Because we are putting a lot of money into the new building, the financial situation has become harder with paying for the running of the school,” he said.
Adler said: “We can’t force parents to pay... All we can do is ask them to help.”
