A state-aided Charedi secondary school for girls in Stamford Hill is proposing to take primary-age pupils because it has too few applicants.

The Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School, which had planned for 400 pupils from 11 to 16, has a school roll of only 305 despite the expanding local Charedi population.

Now governors want to start accepting girls from the last two years of primary school in September 2019, creating a middle school from years five to eight and an upper school up to year 11 on the same site.

The school has been operating at “well below” capacity, they said. A consultation closes at the end of the month with a final decision due in mid- March.

Yesodey Hatorah teaches the national curriculum and its GCSE results are well above average.

Most of its pupils come from the independent Yesodey Hatorah Primary Girls School and even an “unprecedented” 20 per cent increase in applications from other Charedi primaries would be too little to fill the secondary school, governors say.