Idea #17 - Create a UK Centre for Jewish Education
Source: The Jewish Chronicle
In her series of proposals to transform the British Jewish community, Miriam Shaviv writes of her father's idea to create a UK Centre for Jewish Education. This would be a national in-service training and resource centre serving all schools and would produce curricular and teaching materials. Under the direction of a small permanent staff, teams of teachers could be seconded to the centre to work on practical projects.
Paul Shaviv, the Director of Education of TanenbaumCHAT, the community High School of the Toronto Jewish community, also suggests that the centre could organise and run multiple short courses on content and methodology. It would preferably be linked to a cluster of ‘lab schools’, where materials could be tested in the classroom. An important part of the work of the centre would be the creation of a UK Jewish educational resource mega-website.
The Centre would work hard to raise standards in every area of Jewish studies. Material produced could be shared country-wide, giving a common language of instruction and common materials to an otherwise notoriously fragmented profession. It could educate the educators, and give a permanent home to the Jewish Studies teaching profession. It would encourage and facilitate the sharing of best practice. It could produce publications for students, parents, families and communities.
It could also act as an information clearing house, centrally disseminating information to UK Jewish educators on the best and the most interesting happenings in the Jewish education community around the world.