Menorah head steps down

THE HEADTEACHER of the Menorah Grammar School in Edgware will hand over the reins at the end of the summer term after a year in charge.

Rachel Hanison was drafted in as head of the independent Strictly Orthodox boys’ secondary school after a scathing Ofsted report last year.

“It really is a different school,” she said. “We’ve revamped it from top to bottom, from education to building to safeguarding”. Ofsted, which had recently carried out a fresh inspection, had now recognised the “wholesale transformation” of the school, she said.

Mrs Hanison, who had previously headed the school’s special education unit, took over as head after the school was branded “dysfunctional” by Ofsted.

But she explained she now wanted to return to working directly with children.

Menorah’s religious principal, Rabbi Dovid Sulzbacher, will also leave his role at the end of the school year.

HASMONEAN HIGH School parents have been urged to lobby Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to approve rebuilding plans that were originally rejected three years ago..

Under the redevelopment scheme, the boys’ school in Hendon would relocate to a new site next to a renovated girls’ campus in Mill Hill, enabling the two schools to increase their annual combined intake from around 180 to 210.

But after the plan was narrowly approved by Barnet Council, the Mayor’s Office called for revision over concern about the use of Green Belt land.

In a letter to Hasmonean parents, building committee trustees Barry Ackerman and Daniel Green explained that they had sought a compromise, which would have involved the girls’ school being relocated off site for some three years, whereas the original proposal had avoided that.

“We have tried for some time to enable this potential relocation. This has proved extremely challenging and now, with the additional health and safety issues resulting from Covid, we believe it near impossible,” they said.

“Now is the time to show our disappointment in this quite unnecessary and, in our view, ill-conceived intervention to prevent Hasmonean Boys from finally — after some 40 years — relocating to ‘fit for purpose’ premises which will enable increased numbers to attend together with the economic and teaching benefits of a single campus.

“For the first time in its noble history, the school is seriously considering refusing pupil admissions.”

They asked parents to email both the Mayor and Jules Pipe, Deputy Mayor for Planning asking them now to permit the original scheme.