Hasmo plans single site

HASMONEAN HIGH School has applied to Barnet Council for planning permission to relocate its boys’ division from Hendon next to its girls’ section in Mill Hill.

The boys’ current building in Holders Hill is cramped and out of date, catering for more than 200 pupils than it was intended for and with no room to expand.

Relocation would allow Hasmonean to increase its overall intake from around 180 boys and girls to 210 at a time of increasing demand for Orthodox Jewish secondary places in London.

Andrew McClusky, Hasmonean’s executive headteacher, informed parents the proposal would be discussed by the council’s planning department in the coming weeks, and by the planning committee in December or January. “Subject to gaining approval for our application, we will then fundraise for six months before commenc- ing building works,” he wrote. “This is a very substantial application and therefore it is difficult at this stage to provide firm dates for the completion of a new building. However, the time range is likely to be September 2019 to September 2021.”

If the plan goes ahead, boys and girls will continue to be taught separately.

Mr McClusky thanked the school’s rabbinical authorities, rabbis Yisroel Meir Greenberg of Golders Green Beth Hamedrash and Shlomo Yitzchok Bixenspanner, the new Hendon Adath Yisroel Synagogue minister, for their support.

Rabbi Greenberg, he said, had provided “essential advice to ensure the school ethos will be upheld when the school moves to a new site”.

Mr McClusky had previously told parents that relocation would have cost benefits since the two divisions could share some facilities and teachers would no longer have to travel a mile between two sites.