Anti-Semitism is alive and well in Britain’s schools

My children have never felt the need to hide their Jewishness. That’s the heart of it, I suppose. A few months ago, a boy picked up his books and declared, ‘I’m not sitting next to the Jewish girl’, before moving to another seat.

When she told me about it, my daughter, who is 14, said the kid had just been seeking attention. It was a one-off, she said. She didn’t want me to contact the school. So I decided to let it go; the lesson for her, perhaps, was that this stuff happens in life.

Thinking about it, it had happened once before, a few years ago. It was Chanukah, and my son had decided to wear his kippah to school. He was only seven or eight at the time. In the playground, a kid had said: ‘You’re a Jew. I hate Jews.’

It was alarming at the time. But I had thought that they were isolated incidents.