Torah Temimah Primary School

(The Avigdor Hirsch) Torah Temimah Primary School is a one form entry Voluntary Aided primary school in the London Borough of Brent. It is a Strictly Orthodox Jewish primary school for boys with 200 children on roll aged 3-11. The school includes a Nursery.

History

The school was opened in 1989 when a group of parents decided that local Jewish schools were becoming overcrowded. Its first premises was in Golders Green before moving to Woodside Park Synagogue. In 1996, the school moved to permanent accommodation in what was the Dollis Hill Synagogue, which the school purchased from the United Synagogue in 1995 for £360,000. The school became state aided in April 2000.

Mission Statement

Torah Temimah Primary School exists to provide boys from the Orthodox Anglo-Jewish Community with a high quality Orthodox Jewish Education coupled with National Curriculum studies imbued with Torah values enabling all boys to take their place in and contribute to society.

School Aims

• To give the boys אהבת התורה ומצות

• To inculcate the boys with מדות טובות and an appreciation that these are fundamental to all aspects of life.

• To ensure that pupils reach the highest possible standards in their קודש and חול studies.

• To encourage positive attitudes and exemplary behaviour in pupils in order to develop high self-esteem and confidence.

• Pupils will become progressively more independent and responsible members of the school community.

• Maturity and greater self -awareness will enable pupils to understand and respect the rights of others.

• To develop links with the wider community of which the school is part.

Leadership

Since 2002 the Menahel (Principal) of the school has been Rabbi Ephraim Klyne. He was previously the school's headteacher from 1990 to 2002. He is responsible for the school's Religious Education and Jewish Studies Curriculum and the school's ethos. The Head Teacher, Anthony Wolfson was appointed in September 2002. The Governing Body comprises of Foundation, Parent, Teacher, Staff and Local Authority governors. The Clerk to the Governing Body is Jo Sattaur and the Chairman of Governors is Mikey Wulwick.

External audit

In 2005, the school was awarded Investors in People status and the latest Ofsted inspection in July 2007 graded every aspect of the school outstanding or good. Torah Temimah Primary is one of the top performing primary schools in the London Borough of Brent where the majority of students achieve above-average levels in SATs.

Architecture of the building

Associated engineer -Sir Owen Williams date 1936 - 1938 - Era Modern category Church/Synagogue

Owen Williams acted as both architect and engineer for this building project, which, unlike most of the commissions he received in his career, did not have a government body or industrial company as its client. Its design was undertaken at the same time as the larger and more complex Daily Express building in Manchester. The construction of the 1938 Dollis Hill Synagogue coincided with its elevation to district status with the United Synagogue. Its smaller predecessor, which subsequently served as a community centre, had been affiliated in 1932. The new synagogue was consecrated in 1938. It held 640 people — 324 men at ground level and 316 women at gallery level. The main elements of the building are the hall, a two-storey entrance area with offices and cloakrooms, and a smaller two-storey block at the rear.For Williams, the site had few of the design challenges he was used to — no industrial processes to accommodate, no difficult city centre location, no long spans, no exceptional heights or other engineering problems. Instead, this building called for a sensitive architectural solution.Concrete was Williams' material of choice and here he used reinforced concrete, generally only 125mm in thickness, cast in situ behind a cork lining left exposed as the internal wall finish. With this system, he created a series of vertical planes, zig-zagged in plan to enclose the hall, with similarly folded planes for its roof. With a span of 18.3m, the roof is of sufficient transverse pitch for rainwater drainage, so asphalt weatherproofing was not needed. The hall is the centrepiece of the building and it consists of three bays each 6.1m wide, delineated by the folded planes described. The concrete is thickened at the folds, allowing enough strength for the walls to carry the cantilevered galleries, which sit in the Vs of the chevron-plan walls. The two-storey parts of the complex are rectilinear in plan with flat roofs. The blandness of the outside walls is relieved by two types of emblematic window openings, enclosing the shape of the Star of David (hexagonal) and a seven-candle candelabra (inverted arch). These windows run in horizontal rows around the building. Williams later justified these whimsical features as being of structural relevance to a girder-like concrete element.To cast the concrete, plywood shuttering was used. Because of the limitations of this technique, unintended horizontal bands appear every 1.2m, where the joints between the levels of shuttering were inadequately sealed. There was also some bowing of the plywood under the pressure of the drying concrete, which caused some bowing the wall planes. Dollis Hill Synagogue is considered one of Williams’ least successful ventures into architecture. It was not well received by the client and he was forced to concede a part of his design fee in order to settle with them. The United Synagogue sold the building in 1996, to Torah Temimah Primary School. It is Grade II listed.

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