Teacher gets £29K payout after being “unfairly sacked” and could get his job back

Tuesday 09 February 2016

A secondary-school teacher has been given a £29K payout and could get his job back after being “unfairly sacked” for taking too much time off both sick and during term-time to see his young son in the UK.

The teacher - identified only as Mr G Evans in an Employment Tribunal judgment - had worked at the school for nearly seven years, but was dismissed from his job for “gross misconduct” a few weeks before Christmas in 2014.

He had taken time off to go and see his son following the break-down of his marriage and had also phoned in work sick and his headteacher claimed he’d breached the terms of his teaching contract for taking the time off and for failing to act with honesty and integrity.

The Head told him he was being sacked in the November for misleading the school over flights he had booked to the UK in June 2013 and October 2014,  that his absence from work was a "breach of contract" and that his repeated, planned and unauthorised absences amounted to dishonesty and deception. But he allowed him to carry on teaching with extra duties for a few more weeks because he said there were no safeguarding issues.

A disciplinary panel last year found that the teacher had not only breached the terms of his teaching contract but had cost the taxpayer too - having been paid sick pay while the school had to pay supply teachers to come in and cover his lessons.

Mr Evans had been suffering from stress because of his personal life and appealed, but he lost again when the appeal panel decided to uphold the decision made by the disciplinary panel to dismiss him without notice.

He filed a claim for unfair dismissal on 26 January last year and the case when to a tribunal in December. It concluded that there was a serious oversight in not interviewing Mr Evans during the initial investigation into his conduct which meant he was unable to put his side of the story across at an early stage and this one-sided version of events was 'contrary to natural justice'.

The Tribunal concluded that he'd been unfairly dismissed, saying that: “The Tribunal is fully supportive of the contention that teachers must maintain high standards in both their work and conduct, acting with honesty and integrity, and thus providing a strong example of good citizenship to both pupils and the wider community, and finds that in the context of this type of employment, the Respondent was not unreasonable to label the Applicant’s conduct in respect of the absence following the October 2014 Bookings as ‘gross misconduct’.

“The Tribunal is satisfied that at the point that the Respondent dismissed the Applicant it believed that he was guilty of the Allegations (and also of wasting public funds) but the Tribunal finds that such belief was based on flawed information.

“The Respondent’s failure to interview the Applicant meant that the Investigation Report only presented the conduct from the Respondent’s point of view and the aim of the investigation – to discover the facts – was never achieved.”