A JFS history teacher has received a certificate of excellence for lifetime achievement in this year’s Pearson National Teacher Awards.

Susie Fox retired last week after 36 years in the profession, having taught for 22 at the London school.

Nominated by her colleagues for the award, she said it “came out of the blue”.

“I love the school,” she said. “It’s allowed me to do a lot of things that were very gratifying and fulfilling. I worked with tremendous colleagues and fantastic kids”.

Highlights included promoting the show The Pianist of Willesden Lane, about a young wartime refugee from Vienna; working with Ajex veterans; and leading educational trips to Ely, where JFS pupils were evacuated during the Second World War.

She secured funding from the Philip King Charitable Trust to enable the renovated Ely Museum to include an exhibit recording JFS’s time in the Cambridgeshire city.

She recently visited the new exhibit with Dawn Waterman, the archives and heritage manager of the Board of Deputies, whose father Hans Wasserman was one of the evacuees.