The back-to-school season is fast approaching, but for some Jewish families, the concern has shifted from gathering school supplies to worrying about their child’s safety.
Antisemitic harassment is now forcing Jewish schools to transform from quiet places of learning into heavily guarded security zones. Some school administrators report that protecting students from physical threats has increasingly overshadowed their core mission of providing an education, a stark reality detailed in newly published findings and statistical analyses from the United Kingdom and the United States.
An independent review commissioned by the Department for Education in Britain has revealed that safety has reached crisis levels. Sir David Bell, a former chief inspector of schools leading the investigation, warned that Jewish children and teenagers face an unprecedented degree of hostility. According to early findings from the review, set to be published in full this autumn, some UK school principals spend up to 90 percent of their working hours managing security operations rather than focusing on academic development.
“Security concerns can become one of the many things that headteachers carry with them beyond the school day and, quite literally, can be among the things that keep me awake at night,” one school leader disclosed anonymously during the review. Another principal noted that this operational shift prevents administrators from working on educational priorities and improving school standards.
The physical measures follow a dramatic spike in real-world incidents. Data from the Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 1,926 antisemitic incidents in the UK during the first six months of 2026, building on high-profile attacks including arson, targeting medical vehicles and violent assaults near community centres.
This has taken a toll on some students. Testimony submitted to the UK review detailed routine verbal abuse, harassment on public transport, and the display of hate symbols in classrooms. Jonathan Frisher, a teenager from Cheshire who participated in the investigation as the sole Jewish student at his school, recalled seeing widespread Nazi salutes and receiving hostile threats invoking the Holocaust. Similar accounts were gathered from children as young as 12 and 13, targeted while traveling to faith schools.
A similar situation is unfolding across the United States. National Director of Teach Coalition, Sydney Altfield, highlighted that while Jewish Americans represent roughly 2 percent of the overall population, FBI statistics show they are the victims of nearly 70 percent of all religion-based hate crimes. Within primary and secondary education specifically, antisemitic incidents in American K-12 schools have surged by 434 percent since 2020.
This heightened threat environment has also carried a financial burden. According to Teach Coalition data, Jewish day schools in the US now spend an average of more than $400,000 annually on physical security measures, equating to over $1,000 per student. Educational advocates point out that these funds are routinely diverted from instructional resources, teacher compensation, mental health support, and academic programmes.
In response, education officials and community advocates are calling for structural policy changes. In the UK, the upcoming government report is expected to recommend mandatory teacher training programmes, standardized incident reporting, and dedicated instruction on modern antisemitism for all secondary students.
In the US, advocates are urging Congress to significantly increase public security funding, such as quadrupling the FEMA Nonprofit Security Grant Programme, which currently turns away almost three-quarters of eligible high-risk applicants.
As UK Education Secretary Lucy Powell affirmed, “Jewish children and staff should never face hatred or prejudice, and every school and college must be equipped to tackle it.” Policymakers face growing pressure to ensure that the back-to-school season, marked by fear, gives way to environments where learning once again comes first.
