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Family & Education

Hasmonean to split into two schools after legal ruling

The Department for Education will advise school on way forward after recent court decision on gender segregation

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Hasmonean High School is to split formally into two schools as a result of the recent court ruling on gender segregation.

However, it appears the measure will be largely administrative without deeper impact on the school, which has operated separate boys and girls divisions on different sites for more than a half a century.

Andrew McClusky, executive headteacher of Hasmonean, told parents in an email that the Department for Education “will require Hasmonean to de-amalgamate into two separate schools but there will be no further implications for the school other than this”.

He said the DfE would be writing with further information to advise on the process.

The school has been forced to act after the Appeal Court said Al Hijrah, a state-aided Muslim school in Birmingham, was breaching equality law by segregating boys and girls completely from the age of nine.

The implications of the ruling are being digested by the education authorities and by other Jewish schools where boys and girls are taught separately to varying degrees.

Ofsted believes that the number of Jewish, Christian and Muslim schools that could be affected is in the low 20s.

Hasmonean is planning to modernise its girls’ site in Mill Hill and relocate the boys from Hendon to a new building alongside, but separate, from the girls.

 

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