Published: 3 October 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
A Melbourne Jewish school is suing the parents of three children for unpaid fees. The bigger story is the need to rebuild the Jewish education economy.
Few subjects are touchier than Jews and money. Throw in education, and you have a deep source of tension.
On Sunday, The Age reported that Leibler Yavneh College, a Melbourne Jewish school, has filed court action against the parents of three children at the school who are alleged to owe $300,000 in fees not been paid since 2019.
The Yavneh case, including a picture of the school, headed a broader article about debt recovery for private schools. Much lower down, The Age reported that Ruyton Girls School, a non-denominational private school, is suing a father for $31,474.53 of unpaid school fees. It quoted a debt collection agency with 250 active accounts for unpaid fees to Victorian private schools, totalling about $3 million in debt.
Another Age story earlier this year reported schools including De La Salle College, Scotch College and Wesley College had used bankruptcy proceedings against families for unpaid fees.
The justification for the focus on Yavneh in this week’s story was the large and long-standing debt of $300,000, a figure the debt collector described as an extreme case.
On the surface, that makes the story about Yavneh fair on the news values: big numbers make big stories. But it remains an uncomfortable article which tells an incomplete story and in doing so gives an unfair impression of a Jewish organisation grubbing for money.
Those within the community who consider Jewish private schools the only possible choice, are not only privileged but ignorant of the lives of their fellow Jews.
