Haredi school in London teaches that women exist to 'clean and cook'

Ultra-orthodox schools have been in conflict with education authorities for several year.

By SAM SOKOL
Updated: FEBRUARY 19, 2016 01:05
yeshiva study (photo credit: Courtesy)
yeshiva study
(photo credit: Courtesy)
An ultra-Orthodox school in London has been censured by British educational authorities for teaching its pupils that a woman’s role is to “look after children, clean the house and cook,” according to The Independent.
Stamford’s Hill’s Beis Aharon School is only the latest in a long string of controversies and comes hot on the heels of last month’s closure order against the Talmud Torah Tashbar school in north London by the Department of Education for encouraging “cultural and ethnic insularity because it is so narrow and almost exclusively rooted in the study of the Torah.” The soon-to-be-closed school operated illegally for 40 years and did not teach children English.
In the case of Beis Aharon, Britain’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) issued a report asserting that the school’s pupils “universally consider that the role of women is to ‘look after children, clean the house and cook,’ while men ‘go to work,’” and that they received only one hour of secular instruction daily.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, the school had previously failed to implement improvements in its secular education ordered by authorities, with Ofsted panning the school’s lack of instruction in English, technology and health education.
Last September, the Beis Rochel boys’ school in north London also came under fire after the Independent obtained a copy of a worksheet distributed to pupils that taught that “goyim” (non-Jews) are evil.
According to the report, the pupils are taught that those who perpetrated the Holocaust were goyim, making no distinction between non-Jews and Nazis.
“What have the evil goyim (non-Jews) done with the synagogues and cheders [Jewish primary schools]?” the worksheet reads. “Burned them” is the correct answer.
Jerusalem Post Staff, Jerry Lewis and JTA contributed to this report.