With the outbreak of the First World War and the Aliens Acts of 1919-20, Eastern European immigration came to a virtual halt. As the East End Jewish community began its move to the suburbs in the interwar years, the JFS was looking increasingly isolated. The Jewish population of the East End had dropped by a third by the 1920s, and the London County Council considered closing the school.

JFS came into its own again, however, in the 1930s, when it was able to open its doors to refugees from Nazi Germany. On the outbreak of war in 1939, the school and its pupils were evacuated to Ely, in Cambridgeshire (where James de Rothschild was the local MP). A bomb that destroyed the Bell Lane premises in 1941 vindicated the evacuation, but the future of the school hung in the balance once the war was over.

After much wrangling in the period of post-war reconstruction, the school was finally re-opened in new premises in Camden Town in 1958. There it continued to play its part in mainstream educational developments - the introduction of comprehensive schools in the 1960s, then the National Curriculum in the 1980s and grant-maintained status in the 1990s. In 2003, with finance under the Public-Private Partnerships initiative, it moved to new premises in Brent.

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