Panning the PANs – Part 2 - On Yesodey Hatorah Admissions

Before turning to the specifics of the consultation something must also be said about the Yesodey Hatorah Schools and its admission procedure as well as its relationship, if that's the right word, with Beis Yaakov (BY). BY, it will be recalled, was recently established and has only a primary school.

The Yesodey Hatorah girls school was established towards the end of the 1940s or thereabout. They were the first frum girls' school in the area and served the local 'frum' community as the term was understood at that time. For e.g. initially classes were co-ed even for 12 years olds which would be unheard of today. The background of the parent body was also not necessarily what would nowadays be classed frum.

As the community grew in number and as the frum world became frummer Yesodey Hatorah moved with the times. Yet despite this it has always been the school which traditionally served the middle ground of the community and remains so to this day. During the 1960s and 70s and first half of the 1980s when there was only Lubavitch, Bnos and Satmar, that meant practically everyone else. Towards the end of the 1980s and more so in the 1990s when the community's exponential growth began and the ‘right’ veered ever more east YHS began being seen as, and still is to a degree, the 'moderate' and 'soft' choice. It may be due to trivialities like the length of hair and skirts, the denier of tights or driving mums but these things matter round here. Out of this arose Beis Chinuch which started life as a frummer and holier version of Yesodey Hatorah and which overall still holds that position.

Not at all by coincidence, it was also around this time in the 1990s or so that Yesodey Hatorah became progressively more selective in its admissions. As Pinter openly says, he doesn't want to be 'left with' the downs and outs (though he is known to put it in far more colourful language).

This caused a great degree of anguish throughout the 1990s and 2000s and families were forced to move to North West London or to Manchester and even further afield because they simply had no school for their children. In other cases, parents were forced to remain with the school of their movement because the unaffiliated schools in the supposed middle ground, be it Yesodey Hatorah or Beis Chinuch, would not accept them.

Those who suffered the worst were families from ‘irregular’ backgrounds. I am referring to ‘dysfunctional’ or ‘nebech’ families, single-parent families, Sephardim, balei tshuva and other non-‘heimish’ backgrounds who must suffer the indignities of a microscopic assessment before anyone will even consider them let alone accept them. They often have no family to fight their cause, no established community to turn to, no money or connections to flex some muscle on their behalf and so they must fall back on the unaffiliated Rabbonim, which is a parlous state indeed. These Rabbonim themselves, without the backing of a large community, can possibly provide sympathy and empathy and lots of chizuk but little else.

Yet for a long time, besides those who suffered no one really did anything. Because if the schools act as an effective means to keep ‘undesirables’ out and those most likely to stray on the straight and narrow who exactly round here in authority will complain? And in Yesodey Hatorah’s case, if there is anyone whom Pinter will most gleefully reject it is those parents who were born in one mode and who try to rise above (or fall below depending on your viewpoint) their station. He doesn't want to be the first port of call for those smart alecs to whom their parents' and rabbis' lifestyle is no longer good enough. And so long that it is in his power to get such families to conform or move away he will fulfil that role with a relish and with the nod and wink of his elevated peers.

At a practical level, the main gatekeeping necessary at Yesodey Hatorah (as well as at other schools) is at the primary school entry stage since relatively few apply at a later stage, whether during the primary or secondary years or from primary to secondary. This process at YH Primary as at YHS throughout this period has been and remains the sole preserve, if not the actual creation, of Pinter himself. (At the boys’ school where he is not in charge, admissions are far more relaxed.) This is not to say that he controls every single admission but it is he who devises the strategies to control admission and who oversees its execution. And when there are rejections, of which there is no shortage, it is also to his door, if not his feet, that all communications, negotiations, begging, pleading, phone calls, tears and all the rest are directed.

A Yesodey Hatorah rejection letter

Those who are rejected will testify to the run-arounds, half-truths and outright lies they are given, the deflecting of blame and the sheer contempt in the manner they are treated. The rejection letter will give no reason and simply tell you that you’re not accepted. After that it’s all verbal with numerous phone calls where you can’t get through, visits with no one to speak to, promises that someone will call back and appointments which are not kept and every other tactic designed to wear down the rejects in the hope they will go away or be broken into submission so that they’ll remember forever who the boss is. Except in the very difficult cases when anonymous written threats are received of being reported for benefits fiddling.

The reason why the admission problem is particularly acute with Yesodey Hatorah because it is a communal school, founded by the community and funded by the community but still they are accountable to no one. They even market themselves as the ‘town’s school’. Yet when it comes to admissions there is no formal procedure, no criteria published, no admissions committee worth speaking of (always ‘anonymous’) and no appeals system and it is at the whim of a single individual that the destiny of entire families are decided. The fact that Pinter likes to present himself to the media and to politicians as the smiling, human face of Stamford Hill also does not help those with the misfortune to encounter his darker side on local display. Even the various Chasidic movements which are far from democratic have their own authorities and their own internal dynamics, be they rabbinical or lay, who are the ultimate decisors and where there exists an appellate system of sorts though not necessarily as formally as the term is usually understood. Similarly, Beis Chinuch is also led by a committee and is guided by local Rabbonim without a single strongman wielding all the power. But with Yesodey Hatorah all the power rests with one individual and who wields it indiscriminately.

Din Torah Ruling on YHS Admissions Committee

In one instance in 2005 there was a Din Torah which the local Beis Din accepted after initial refusals and much cajoling. Pinter appeared in person and alone to represent the school. The Beis Din went on to rule that an admission committee will be set up by the local Rabbinate to oversee admissions. Yet no such committee was ever set up. The ruling was based on the school's constitution at the time which had nothing to say on admissions and a lot to say on governance but within a short time that charity ‘ceased to exist’ and a new charity with a different constitution took its place. Needless to say, the large lay and rabbinical committees in the original constitution did not make it over to the new one and the rejections continued apace.

Although the voluntary-aided status of YH Seniors should have put paid to such arbitrary practices in fact little changed. For a start, as I said earlier, few change schools at secondary school. There is therefore relatively little demand for places at secondary school since most girls are by then settled. Yesodey Hatorah has of course done nothing to change that and, as will be seen later, put in much though and effort to ensure it remains this way. Besides, not many know how the local authority application system works and of those who dare to enquire many are fobbed off by the school about availability and criteria.

There is then the concern about complaining to an outside body which many fear may constitute 'mesire' (snitching) and which Pinter himself bandies about when faced with more difficult applicants. The end result is that few take their grievances to the local authority and are even less likely to appeal a decision against them. That said, on the whole, those who apply and know how to go about it do get in simply because YHS knows it has no alternative.

As a result of the above, YHS is almost entirely a continuation of YH Primary with the primary school acting as its de facto feeder school. This is not official, though, as the Schools Admissions Code (para. 1.9.l) prohibits a publicly funded school from nominating an independent school as a feeder.

Notwithstanding the above, there was, and remains a concern that 'undesirables' could potentially turn up at YHS in droves and exclude even what YHS sees as its core applicants from YHS Primary, its feeder school in all but name. To cover for this, YHS drafted admissions criteria (an earlier version of which was found by the Schools Adjudicator to be unlawful*), giving the impression that only Chareidi girls who matched a certain definition of 'charedi' would be admitted to the school. To this end they concocted a definition of 'chareidi'* despite that no such definition exists anywhere in the world. It includes such nonsense as 'Very long skirts are not accepted within our Charedi חרדי community and as such are forbidden'.

Besides it being a non-sequitur it simply is not true. There is a huge difference between something not being the norm to not being 'accepted' and to being forbidden. This, however, is a good example of the social engineering implicit in these rules. There are plenty of Chareidi communities in London and elsewhere where long skirts are the norm and no one has ever banned them. But it is usually slightly more ‘modern’ groups though still Chareidi who wear such skirts. It is these that YHS is trying to keep on the wrong side of the tall gates and if possible to get them to move away altogether. Quite besides that, the rules in the admissions criteria on skirts, wigs and the like are hardly eligible criteria at all. Admissions criteria presuppose that people are adhering to a certain set of rules and by which they are judged rather than setting the very rules solely for those same admissions purposes.

But it is in the definitions itself that their true intentions are revealed. According to the admissions criteria,

“In these arrangements “Charedi Jewish girl” means a girl who is a member of a Charedi family that lives in accordance with Charedi principles and ethics as prescribed by the Rabbinate of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations.”

Yet no such definition by the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) exists. UOHC’s 2012 constitution (Articles of Association) does not even contain the word Chareidi at all. At clause 26.1 it stipulates that to hold office a person must abide “by Jewish law as laid down by the Shulchan Oruch together with its commentaries, as interpreted by the Rabbinate” but otherwise there are no prescriptive rules. Similarly, UOHC encompasses all kinds from shuls in North West like Hendon Adath and Munks all the way to Satmar. Thus, the idea that there is a single definition of ‘Charedi Jewish Girl’ as set out in those criteria would be ludicrous if it was not so shamelessly deceptive for the purpose of excluding pupils.

The admissions procedures were indeed challenged though on different grounds and the Schools Adjudicator upheld almost all of the complaints. The main grounds of challenge were that the admissions procedure gave the impression that it applied to all applicants whereas in truth it applied only if the school was oversubscribed. This was not an oversight on the part of the school. I recall that when the school opened Joe Lobenstein writing in his Ben Yitzchok column made much of the definition of 'chareidi' and how it would ensure the purity of the school, or however he put it. (Though Lobenstein served as the chair of governors of YHS, he never made that point clear even when he excoriated other Jewish state-aided schools for being state-aided.)

It is also the obsession with admissions which explains why Yesodey Hatorah chose the state aid route for its secondary school rather than its primary school. In general, chareidi schools in the UK have preferred state aided status for primary schools rather than secondary schools. This applies to Pardes House Primary which is state aided as opposed to its grammar school which is not. It is the same at Beis Yaakov in North-West London and was also the case until recently with Menorah Primary versus Menorah High. It is due to the fewer demands of the Department for Education places on the curriculum of primary schools and also due to the greater demands for religious studies in secondary schools.

Yesodey Hatorah by contrast despite purporting to be the most chareidi of the lot chose the reverse route. The only plausible explanation for this is that if its primary school was state aided it would mean having to accept all applicants by a transparent set of rules at the start of their school life and that is something the powers there will not accept. By contrast, with only the secondary school being state aided and combined with the fact that there are not many transfers locally at secondary school age it believed it could work round admissions and which until now has indeed gone to plan.

Make no mistake as to the level of Pinter’s involvement in all of this at the Secondary School despite there being a notional Admission sub-committee. As an employed Principal of the school he should have no involvement in admissions at all. Yet, as these extract of the Board of Governors' minutes show he is involved at every level. From setting admission numbers, admissions application, dealing with the ‘problem’ of over-capacity to appeals where he represented the school and which he ‘fortunately’ won.

I am setting all this out to show how for Yesodey Hatorah admissions is not some passing fad or side issue but an all-encompassing obsession over many years. It is only with this backdrop that the consultation for a Middle School makes any sense.