If You Tickle Us...

Weinberg YHS Appointment, Minutes Having dealt extensively with the anointment of Rivky Weinberg (née Pinter) as Headteacher of Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School it is time to take a closer look at the formalities the school adopted for the process. Famous for its adherence to the letter and spirit of the law, it was a certainty from the start that YHS's selection and anointment process would be entirely above board. But to scotch any doubt we now have the minutes of the meetings of the governing body relating to the appointment (above) to prove the point. To save you wading through the deliberations, and having to follow Pinter as he moves in and out of the meeting, let me summarise for you the proceedings in what I hope will be a few brief paragraphs. Mrs Pinter passed away on 12 March of this year and on 18 March 2014 the Governing Body headed by the Adath Burial Society trustee, Tony Bibleman, met to consider the appointment of a new Headteacher. At this very early s

…as taught at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School To those of you who have not yet heard, and that assumes that you read neither the Hamodia nor the Jewish Tribune, the voluntary-aided Yesodey Hatorah Senior School (YHS) has just appointed a new head teacher. She goes by Rivky Weinberg, but don't be fooled by her surname. Her maiden name was Pinter, daughter of Avrohom/Abraham Pinter, and that is the story that concerns us here. This appointment is rotten at so many levels, so brazenly bent, so beggaring belief, so cynically contemptuous of staff, parents, pupils and the entire community, so disregardful of any modicum of propriety that it is difficult to know even where to start. But start we must and as the mishna teaches us, it’s not your job to complete the task but that isn't an excuse not to have a go. Let us begin with what is certain about Weinberg, which is her age. Wienberg is 33 years old and this makes her one of the youngest head teachers in the UK. In fact

Click to enlarge The email you see above (read it slowly and savour the chill as it courses up your spine) appeared in the inbox of a parent trying to get his child into Yesodey Hatorah School. After getting nowhere with the school’s admissions supremo, namely one Abraham/Avrohom/Avraham/Avrumi Pinter, the parent chanced upon the idea of raising his case with The Learning Trust and other public bodies who might be able to assist. The parent had exhausted his efforts with communal bodies and rabbonim but with little to show for it, which will come as no surprise to us locals. And so he started badgering outside bodies in the hope that they can wield the stick that gets our bigwigs quaking in their oversized trousers. This, it appears, earned him the honour to be at the receiving end of the above email. I should add that without an apparent provenance (though do note the sender's ever so clever address) the email may be a mere coincidence with no connection to YHS and its cont

Yesodey Hatorah is holding a fundraising evening and good luck to them for that. They don’t have to pay for the use of the ‘voluntary aided’ wedding hall that is extorted from the rest of us so that’s already £2,500 gained. As they say, every little helps. As part of the build-up to this annual event, Hamodia has been running a 4-part series, "Yesodey Hatorah - Past and Present",  which is supposed to be a "short historical review of its history". Several photos accompanied the articles with Reb Shmelke Pinter appearing in many of them but not a single photo of that minor inconvenience, Rabbi Pardes, who by chance just happened to found the school. To be fair to them, they apologised in advance for "unintentional inaccuracies, of which we would be pleased to be informed" and by week 3 some corrections duly appeared. The corrections included a number of local names who had given 'substantial support' to the school and also noted that Reb Dovid B

Yesodey Hatorah Admissions Information Pack FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS on admissions to Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School “In drawing up their admission arrangements, admission authorities must ensure that the practices and the criteria used to decide the allocation of school places are fair, clear and objective. Parents should be able to look at a set of arrangements and understand easily how places for that school will be allocated” (Introduction to the School Admission Code, February 2012) 1. Q. I would like to apply for my daughter to join Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School (the School) but she does not attend Yesodey Hatorah Primary School. Can the School refuse my daughter a place because of the primary school she currently or has previously attended? A. No. It is against the law for the School to favour applicants who attended an independent fee-paying primary school. Yesodey Hatorah Primary School is an independent fee-paying school and girls from that sc

1. Set up online account at www.eadmissions.org.uk . This applies to all applicants. If you are applying on a paper form then Hackney residents only should use the application form which can be download here . Residents of other boroughs must contact their home local authorities for an alternative paper form. 2. Complete the Supplementary Information form   and contact the UOHC for it to be signed by a member of the Rabbinate. 3. Complete the application form online or submit your paper application form to your local authority preferably by 25 October 2013 but by no means any later than 31 October 2013. A l ate application will put you at a severe disadvantage. 4. Submit the completed and signed Supplementary Information form to the School by no later than 31 October 2013. 5. Sit back and hope for the best. GOOD LUCK! CONTACT SHEET Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School Egerton Road, London N16 6UB Tel: 020 8826 5500 admin@yesodeyhatorah.org Schoo

Following the ruling of the new Carry On star Rabbi Mordechai Eisner on the Brookside eiruv some of our local finer minds have applied his halachic string-pulling closer to home and the map you see above is the result. Apparently, similar principles apply to both eiruvin and so an eiruv for the gander ought to be an eiruv for the *not tznius to mention*. Of course it being Golders Green they have an eiruv within an eiruv. Like the living rooms within their homes they have a mega super eiruv which they don’t use and is there only for show (and for carrying in hidden pockets) and then a smaller dingier eiruv where they can be themselves in their full glory. But surely if they can have two we poor cousins should deserve at least one. And if we’re going to start somewhere it might as well be south Tottenham where people will actually use it. Stick the eiruv in Fairholt Road and it will become a competition of not using it most. To be honest, Eiruvin has never been one of my strong p

Last week pupils at Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls School were told that there would be an Ofsted inspection yesterday and today. An ‘inspector’ duly turned up yesterday. Ofsted have confirmed that “Ofsted is not conducting an inspection of the school on those two dates.” Parents, as usual, were told nothing. Can the Principal or the Chair of the Board of Governors perhaps clarify what is going on?

Spot the difference Above are recruitment ads for Science and English teachers for the YH Secondary girls' school. Nothing strange in that other than perhaps they may have run out of a ready supply of ex-sem girls and so must cast their net further afield. That however should be a cause for celebration as it indicates that the latest batch of sem graduates have spent their valuable formative years studying how to de-bug lettuce and sew hems and not filling their heads with such narishkeiten as the writings of that notorious anti-semite and his musings on Brutus and Casius. We have hespeidim of gedoilim beginning moirai vraboisai not speeches to friends and countrymen about thrice refusing crowns. That is not the Torah way. Besides, do you know that Science KS3 has life processes as a subject which in turn includes repr-duction, rachmono litzlon ? Is that what we needed a state aided school for to teach our heilige kinderlech how to have more kinderlech kenienehore, chas vc

The conventional view is that Pinter made it big time and on the whole it is difficult to argue with that. The fact of the matter is that Livingstone's article in last week's JC mentions just one person by name whom Ken tells us he likes and respects in equal measure. Tell me who your friends are... comes to mind which is perhaps why it was not quite the local topic of conversation last Shabbos. There is however no principle that the represented must know what is being said and done in their name and so let's get back on topic. Rather than blow Pinter's trumpet which he is more than capable of doing on his own perhaps we should examine his role in all of this and once again ask what's in it for him. Let us take a closer look at the events of the last weeks and see how our liked and respected hero carried out his public duties as representative of the downtrodden of Stamford Hill. 12 February 2012 : Ken Livingstone attends Side-by-Side dinner at the behest of Pi

The last letter is worth a mention too and I still cannot decide if it was written tongue in cheek.

A silent battle has been raging in Stamford Hill for the last few weeks or even months and possibly years though you would know little about it if you merely followed the local press. The noticeboards have been of some assistance though they also only tell part of the tale. I do not pretend to know all the details so I will present what I do know and leave it to others to fill in the missing bits. Poised on one side is The Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools and Organisations Ltd (AOJSO). Quite a mouth full, I know, but we do like grand sounding names and acronyms round here so let's not dwell on peripheral matters. The AOJSO has made it its task to represent local Jewish schools and yeshivas to government bodies. A notice which popped up on the noticeboards for a short while underlined the object of 'encouraging the fullest co-operation’ between schools and the authorities. Massed on the other extreme is Satmar of the 86 Cazenove chapter and some anonymous activists w

See Part I below Rather than quibble with Ofsted's grading I have run a simple comparison exercise on the Department of Education website comparing YHS to other Hackney secondary schools for which figures are available. The results, which are for 2009-2010, are produced below. I will let the figures speak for themselves and merely say that either the individuals/family/board or whoever runs the school has developed a miraculous formula by which they can achieve an 'Outstanding' grade yet spend overall only 86% of their allocated budget, and less than 50% of it on actual teaching, employ less than a handful of FTE (full time equivalent) qualified teachers, maintain a teacher to pupil ratio that would barely fit the school hall though with a back office budget that exceeds each of the other schools. Or these figures are crying out for some other explanation. Attainment These show YHS to be well above the national average and very high across the board. Who is t