JFS has broken with tradition and gone outside the Jewish community for its new permanent headteacher.

David Moody, who helped to turn around one of the capital’s worst-performing schools and latterly had a senior role with an academy chain, will lose no time in taking up the role. He is due to start work at the school next Wednesday.

Chairman of governors Andrew Moss, in an announcement to parents on Monday, said the new head was “eager to learn what JFS means to the families who entrust their children to it and of the hopes that they have for our school”.

The interview panel, he said, had been “deeply impressed with Dr Moody’s knowledge and expertise relating to the welfare and personal development of students and was unanimous in supporting this appointment”.

JFS has been under a variety of interim leaders for the past six months since the sudden departure of Rachel Fink, following a visit from Ofsted which led to the school being downgraded to “inadequate” and placed in special measures.

It has followed a trend which has seen the top job in most Jewish secondary schools in the mainstream religious sector go to a non-Jewish candidate. King David High, Manchester, recently installed John Dalziel as its first executive head to strengthen its leadership.

Dr Moody, who is in his early 40s, has a doctorate in organic chemistry from Cambridge University.

He became principal of Harris Battersea Academy in 2014, not long after it had been forced to convert to academy status after being branded inadequate by Ofsted the year before. In 2012, barely a third of pupils achieved five GCSE passes including English and maths.

In 2017, it had become the fourth highest school in England for academic progress from entry to GCSE and was the Evening Standard’s School of the year.

The school had “some of the poorest children in London and we meet them with a private-school set of expectations,” he said in an interview with the newspaper.

Pupils were “sanctioned if they roll their eyes, shrug, sigh or do anything that says they are not ready to learn”.

Miscreants were taken to a separate room to await the punishment he decided for them.

He acknowledged having “tears in my eyes” when Ofsted recognised the school as outstanding in all areas in 2018, highlighting the principal’s “outstanding leadership and unwavering commitment to every pupil”.

In 2019, he moved to the Academies Enterprise Trust, a consortium of 57 schools, where he was responsible for overseeing 10 secondaries.

His academy experience will be invaluable to JFS, which as a result of its poor Ofsted, must now join an academy trust. That is expected to be the United-Synagogue founded Jewish Community Academy Trust.

Academic performance was never in question at JFS. But inspectors criticised it over lapses in safeguarding and the failure to tackle low-level disruption caused by some pupils.

The results of his zero-tolerance approach to ill discipline at Harris Battersea were plain to see, where, Ofsted noted, “behaviour in lessons and around the school is admirable”.

JFS is expecting to receive a follow-up report from Ofsted on its progress very shortly.

"It's been a hugely difficult and challenging six months<" Mr Moss told the JC.  "But I and the governors are incredibly proud of the whole staff team for pulling together behind the school for the sake of the children - and making the crucial mprovements to move forwards through tumultuous times. 

"We've literally thrown our hearts and souls into making the changes identified by Ofsted and maintaining their trust in the school's capacity to sustain those improvements and consolidate under Dr Moody's leadership."