Hasmo reveals plans to swap girls and boys sites - The Jewish Chronicle

Hasmonean High School leaders have revealed bold new plans which will involve the Boys High School moving to the site of the Girls School in the Mill Hill and the girls relocating to the boys at Hendon.

Both sites will be redeveloped with new buildings that will allow an expansion of the Boys School in the wake of growing demand.

Plans to relocate the boys in a proposed new building alongside the girls have twice been turned down over the past decade – firstly by the Mayor of London and most recently by Barnet Council – over concerns that they would encroach on green belt land.

But the Jewish Secondary Schools Movement, which oversees the schools, believes the latest proposals will solve the problem of “lack of capacity and poor quality buildings”.

Under the proposals, the existing gym and music block and adjacent nursery building at the girls site in Page Street would be demolished and “replaced with a new three storey building to provide a new middle school building for Hasmonean High School for Boys and a sports hall for use by the school as a whole.”

Year 7 and 8 boys are currently being housed in a former primary school in Belsize Park. “However, this is a temporary solution and is untenable in the long term due to the cost of the lease, the great practical difficulty in educating children a long way outside their catchment area (with a difficult commute into inner London) and in administering the school on an additional site,” JSSM says.

The remaining buildings at Mill Hill would be “converted to a new boys upper school”.

Architects image of proposed new Middle School for Hasmonean Boys at Mill Hill[Missing Credit]

Meanwhile, the teaching blocks at the current Boys School in Holders Hill Road would be replaced by “a new building, with the main hall, sports hall and specialist teaching block remaining, giving an overall site capacity for a 3 and a half form entry school of 705 pupils”.

Hasmonean added, “ In order to have enough space for the project to be carried out without the school having to be decanted, the North Hendon Synagogue site will be included in the scheme, with a replacement synagogue incorporated into the new building.”

Parents were told, “Whilst the demand for places at the Girls School has remained stable for some years and is likely to continue to do so, the demand for Boys School places has been steadily increasing due to the lack of nearby alternatives for the mix of religious and secular education offered by the school. This has left many children without any secondary school that meets their needs.”

Hasmonean hopes to expand its current roll at the Boys School from 774 to 875 in two years and then 945. The Girls School roll of 585 pupils is expected to remain stable.

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