CHANTAL ABITBOL

A STRING of non-Jewish appointments to head Sydney’s leading Jewish schools has led to suggestions there is a dearth of Jewish educators in Australia ready to seize top posts.

Some school boards have argued their priority is finding the best person for the job, “regardless of religious affiliation”.

This was the case when Sydney’s Emanuel School announced plans last month to replace outgoing principal Dr Bruce Carter, who is not Jewish, with another non-Jewish principal.

Moriah College also opted for the same route when it hired principal/CEO Kim Fillingham last December, despite some parents’ concerns that a non-Jewish head would struggle to push the school’s “modern Jewish ethos”.

All nine Jewish schools in Melbourne are headed by Jewish principals, although a number of them have been brought here from abroad to take up their posts.

A number of leading Jewish educators say the growing trend to hire outside the community is part of deeper problem plaguing Australia’s Jewish education system - with only a handful of Jews making a career in education, leading to a shortage of candidates vying for upper management positions.

“What Jewish mother has a dream of her son becoming the principal of a day school? Unfortunately, it’s still true that education is not the chosen profession of the vast majority of Jewish children, boys or girls,” said Peta Jones Pellach, director of adult education at Sydney’s Shalom Institute. “Jewish students are encouraged to aim for something that will be lucrative.”

Reflecting on the latest appointments, she added, some Jewish schools have redefined the principal’s role over the years, moving away from the traditional model of headmaster as “symbolic” leader, in favour of someone who is more of a business administrator.

As a result, it has become less of a priority to hire someone of the Jewish faith.

“Essentially, a principal needs to be an effective manager who will support the ethos of the school, but who won’t necessarily have to live it,” said Pellach.

Paul Forgasz, former headmaster at Melbourne’s Mount Scopus Memorial College, now a Jewish history lecturer at Monash University, said he agreed there was a shortage of Jewish candidates for leadership roles.

He said he suspects most school boards would prefer to appoint Jewish heads, but not at the risk of sacrificing quality.

“Appointing the best person for the position has to be the priority,” said Forgasz. “The question of a candidate’s Jewishness is only one of many factors that needs to be considered. I’d be worried if a Jewish candidate were appointed to a principal position on the basis of close enough being good enough.”

Emanuel president Jonathan Sesel said securing the most qualified person for the job, regardless of religious affiliation, had always been the school’s main consideration when it set out on its quest to appoint a successor.

But he stressed the key to such an arrangement was securing a Jewish deputy principal to manage the school’s Jewish life, effectively giving the school the “best of both worlds”.

He added the board considered a large field of applicants for the post, but declined to say what percentage of those were Jewish.

He denies, however, there is a shortage of skilled Jewish candidates “relative to the population”.

“There are many excellent senior Jewish teachers. [But] if you don’t have a pre-requisite for the person to be of the Jewish faith, then the statistical chances of a Jewish person getting the job is [significantly less],” he said.

Regardless, Pellach believes the community should be providing more incentives to attract Jewish students to careers in education.

“If we want to have the next principal at Moriah or Emanuel to be a Jewish principal, then we should already be looking at a couple of candidates right now and taking those students who would just be finishing school and giving them every incentive,” she said. “It’s a huge investment and it involves looking forward.”