A troubling picture of what lies ahead for Victoria’s Jewish day schools

Benjamin Preiss talks to Alan Schwartz, convenor of the Jewish Schools Project, about the challenges posed by heavy fees, rising secularisation and a drift to state schools

FOR ANYONE INVESTED in the long-term future of Melbourne’s Jewish education system, the Jewish Schools Project’s discussion paper makes for uncomfortable reading.

Rising cost pressures and stagnating enrolments paint a troubling picture of what lies ahead for Victoria’s Jewish day schools if current trends continue.

The Jewish Schools Project tackles these challenges in granular detail in the recently released report Rethinking the future of our schools.

While Melbourne has a wide range of Jewish schools, the report examined just four – Mount Scopus Memorial College, Bialik College, Leibler Yavneh College and King David School.

It makes no mention of other well-established schools, including Sholem Aleichem College or Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Colleges.

Jewish Schools Project convenor Alan Schwartz says the discussion paper focused on these four schools because they are all co-educational and each goes through to VCE.

He says they also provided extensive data that allowed for a high-level analysis. “They were all willing to give us a lot of financial information about their costs, about their revenues on a confidential basis,” he says.

Mr Schwartz has observed a waning commitment to Jewish education due to a range of factors, including rising secularisation and increasing difficulty paying full fees.

“I know that from talking to my children and talking about their friends.”