Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School

Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School

Established	1942
Type	Voluntary aided school
Religion	Charedi Judaism
Headteacher	Mrs Rivky Weinberg
Principal	Rabbi Abraham Pinter
Location	Egerton Road Stamford Hill Greater London N16 6UB England
Local authority	Hackney
DfE number	204/4318
DfE URN	133599 Tables
Ofsted	Reports
Gender	Girls
Ages	11–16

Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls' School is a Jewish secondary school for girls, located in the Stamford Hill area of the London Borough of Hackney in England.

The school was founded in 1942 as an independent school with separate sections for boys and girls, and with junior and senior departments. The girls' senior department became a voluntary aided school in September 2005. At this time the school moved into new accommodation. Several figures attended the formal opening of the new school building, including Tony Blair, Lord Levy, Gerald Ronson, and Richard Desmond. In 2007 the school was top of the Department for Education's school's "value added" scoring system for pupil progress. In October 2014 the school was downgraded from "Outstanding" to "Good" in its ratings by the Ofsted inspectorate following a no-notice inspection.

The school primarily serves the Charedi Jewish community of Stamford Hill. The Charedi community do not have access to television, the internet or other media, and members of the community aim to lead modest lives governed by the codes of Torah observance. In 2008 it emerged that nine pupils had refused to sit a Key Stage 3 Shakespeare test on The Merchant of Venice because they felt the character of Shylock was antisemitic.

In 2014, the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA (OCR) Exam board, having conducted an investigation into alleged exam malpractice, concluded that the school had redacted (deleted) questions involving the evolution of species on GCSE science exam questions. Ofqual subsequently ruled that blocking out exam questions is malpractice, and, accordingly, not permissible. However it was later revealed that OCR had privately agreed that the school could advise students not to answer particular questions if they "need to do this in view of their religious beliefs."

The school’s principal, Rabbi Abraham Pinter, has said that few students go to university because "there isn’t the environment for Haredi girls to do that", and that "Our experience is that the better educated girls turn out to be the most successful mothers. For us, that’s the most important role a woman plays."