unfair dismissal?

SarEl

terra_ferma wrote: »

Well that's your opinion.
Deciding that her warning was warranted is also just your opinion, not a fact, as if I remember right from other posts you are a solicitor and not a teacher.

You have a poor memory - both for what I do for a living and the fact that you have freqently misadvised people to claim unfair or constructive dismissal when they have less than 12 months employment. Yes, it is my opinion. It's a sound one and backed up by facts. Unlike yours.

terra_ferma

SarEl wrote: »

You have a poor memory - both for what I do for a living and the fact that you have freqently misadvised people to claim unfair or constructive dismissal when they have less than 12 months employment. Yes, it is my opinion. It's a sound one and backed up by facts. Unlike yours.

I've not 'frequently misadvised' anyone as far as I can remember.
I'm not sure what my 'advice' is supposed to have been here.... advising someone to call Acas (which you are right I often do) is not the same as advising someone they can claim unfair/constructive dismissal....

are you sure you are not confusing me with someone else?

mizzbiz

Did you have any kind of appraisal in the time that you were there? If so, was it good?

You won't get far at all with unfair dismissal; you only get (most) rights after being employed for at least 1 year. However, try googling 'wrongful' dismissal as if the school behaved innappropriately, you may be able to go down that route.

I would suggest, however, that when schools let someone go the way they have let you go, it's usually because they've wanted rid for ages and were just waiting for you to give them an excuse.

SarEl

mizzbiz wrote: »

Did you have any kind of appraisal in the time that you were there? If so, was it good?

You won't get far at all with unfair dismissal; you only get (most) rights after being employed for at least 1 year. However, try googling 'wrongful' dismissal as if the school behaved innappropriately, you may be able to go down that route.

I would suggest, however, that when schools let someone go the way they have let you go, it's usually because they've wanted rid for ages and were just waiting for you to give them an excuse.

I really do think that the entire point is being repeatedly missed here. The OP has not been dismissed. She resigned. Verbally. She was not told that she would be dismissed by anyone - the worst consequence of not resigning is a formal warning. It was, and still remains, since the school have nothing in writing, her choice - she may return to work as normal on Monday, refute the resignation and face a disciplinary. Had they been wanting to "get rid for ages" then they would have dismissed her outright, which she could have done nothing about because she does not have 12 months service, not given her the option of a warning or a resignation, six weeks before she was leaving anyway. Maybe they should have proceeded to a disciplinary and given her a warning, and not offered the option. She would have left anyway in six weeks, but with a formal warning on her record, which would show up on any reference.

And yes, this is my opinion...permitting pupils to engage in activity which is not permitted because it "might settle them down" and loosing control of a classroom is certainly something that anyone in that position should expect a warning for. If you are in charge of a classroom it is your responsibility to maintain control and standards, and how hot it is or whether the children wish to behave are not relevant matters. During the time that children are in school, the school is in loco parentis, and are legally responsible for not only these matters, but also the safety of children. If classes are permitted to act and behave as they wish, and rewarded for it, then they will become less well bahaved - not better - and the next time that control is lost someone could be hurt or worse.

DVardysShadow

SarEl wrote: »

And yes, this is my opinion...permitting pupils to engage in activity which is not permitted because it "might settle them down" and loosing control of a classroom is certainly something that anyone in that position should expect a warning for. If you are in charge of a classroom it is your responsibility to maintain control and standards, and how hot it is or whether the children wish to behave are not relevant matters.

I would disagree with the above - particularly as law is your forte, perhaps more than management.

Firstly, unless I have missed it, it does not appear that mobile phone use is prohibited. Obviously, it does not fit in with a class being productive, but for a 5 minute break, unless there is actually a formal ban in place, I would say that this would be at teacher's discretion. Although it appears to have been a rather poor decision in the event.

Secondly, losing control of a class is probably a hazard of teaching. I do not think that putting such events into a disciplinary framework is a constructive way of dealing with the matter - particularly for a new teacher. This is a competence and capability type of issue, rather than an issue of wilfulness.

If you read carefully, I think you will agree that hazz21 actually had a fair handle on the dynamics in the classroom in terms of analysis and I think that a mature mentoring type manager would recognise this and acknowledge that hazz21 also tried to address the situation. What went wrong was that the interventions were ill-judged. The appropriate response is to recognise the good and to provide coaching to overcome the shortcomings in performance. This should be dealt with entirely outside the framework of discipline - even if coaching ultimately fails, it is a competence and capability matter, not a misconduct matter.

Thirdly, the lack of support from management is IMO shortsighted - and is possibly the root of the problems hazz21 experienced. If the class which hazz21 had the problems with realise that s/he is not there on Monday, they will be thinking "Result! We saw off a[nother] teacher" - they will know better how to do it for next time - and they may already be experienced. They could actually be optimising their behaviour to management shortcomings.

Now that they have dealt with the teacher within a disciplinary framework, they have made the relationship between Management and the teacher adversarial. This is a rift which an astute class can identify and exploit. If they had dealt with it in a coaching and mentoring framework, they could have just sent a senior colleague in with the teacher to the next lesson with that class to show that there is good warm feeling between the teacher and the management and send a very strong message that management supports its staff.

Bamber19

SarEl wrote: »

You cannot claim unfair dismissal (of any kind) unless you have 12 months employment.

You can actually, general rule is you must have 1 year of service but there are various situations where you can claim unfair dismissal regardless of length of service (could be the day after you started)

None of the grounds apply to this situation, primarily because no-one has been dismissed (nor constructively dismissed) but you're making a supposed statement of fact that is factually incorrect.