In April 2016, by which time she was a permanent member of staff, she moved in with her boyfriend Oz Waknin, a business consultant, in Pimlico, central London.The following month, the couple were invited to a religious festival barbecue attended by a number of parents of nursery children and owner Mendy Freundlich.Miss de Groen grew up in a strict Jewish family in Stamford Hill, north-east London, but left ‘after many years of significant discontent’.After spending three years in Israel she got a temporary job at Gan Menachem Nursery in 2012 through her mother’s friendship with the headteacher.She was sacked a month later for bringing the nursery into disrepute.The tribunal heard Miss de Groen knew she had to comply with the ‘nursery’s ultra-orthodox teaching but the teacher said: ‘I felt I was being punished in my professional life for a private issue that was entirely separate to my work for the nursery.’The Gan Menachem Nursery denies discrimination and says it acted on the recommendation of its human resources company. There are some 564 pupils at the school which opens six days a week, and many of them speak Yiddish as their first language.The cause of the fire is under investigation but a Metropolitan Police source said it was believed to have been started by an electrical fault.

Belz sect members run at least two large schools in north London which educate hundreds of young Jewish students - one of which is the Talmud Torah Machzikei Hadass, where the fire broke out.Miss de Groen said she told Mr Freundlich she was living with her boyfriend and did not recall ‘any negative reaction to my comment from anyone at the barbecue’.Four weeks later she was taken out of her class and interviewed for an hour by headteacher Miriam Lieberman and nursery manager Dina Toron about her personal circumstances.Nearly 100 firefighters were sent to a Jewish faith school in east London as a fire ripped through it.Some 15 London Fire Brigade engines were deployed to the scene shortly before midnight on Tuesday, with crews facing dangerous conditions as the ground floor collapsed into the basement.