Deputy Headteacher in London Cleared After Successful Application to Dismiss TRA Case

The Client

Our client was an experienced teacher and Deputy Headteacher in London who had spent much of his career working with children with special educational needs.

He was referred to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) following allegations concerning a recruitment agency operated by members of his wider family. The allegations were serious. In addition to an alleged failure to disclose the family connection formally, the TRA alleged that our client had sought to secure a financial benefit for family members and that his conduct was dishonest and lacked integrity.

Had those allegations been proved, our client faced findings of serious professional misconduct and the possibility of a prohibition order preventing him from teaching.

The Allegations

The case arose from our client’s employment as a Deputy Headteacher within a specialist SEND school.

A recruitment agency was owned by our client’s family member. The TRA alleged that our client had failed to record the family connection on annual declaration forms. It was further alleged that, by failing to make the formal declaration, our client had made or intended to secure a financial benefit for family members and that his conduct was dishonest and lacked integrity.

Our client accepted that the family connection had not been properly recorded on the relevant declaration form. However, he strongly denied that there had been any deliberate concealment, financial motive, dishonesty or lack of integrity.

Our Defence Strategy and Work

From the outset, we maintained that the TRA’s case failed to distinguish between an administrative omission and serious professional misconduct.

The context was critical. At the relevant time, our client had been working in an exceptionally difficult SEND school. The school was experiencing serious staffing shortages, significant safeguarding concerns and considerable instability within its senior leadership team. Agency staff were essential simply to maintain safe staffing levels for vulnerable pupils.

The Trust’s preferred recruitment provider was frequently unable to supply sufficient staff. Other recruitment agencies therefore had to be used.

Importantly, our client was not responsible for sourcing agency staff on a day-to-day basis and there was no evidence that he had directed staff towards a particular agency or received any financial benefit from its use.

We also obtained and relied upon important evidence demonstrating that the family connection was not being concealed. The interim Headteacher confirmed that our client had told him early in their working relationship that a family member operated a recruitment agency. He described their relationship as open and transparent. There was also evidence that senior figures within the Trust were aware that the agency was operated by a family member and that the agency had been discussed as a possible source of specialist SEND staff.

That evidence was fundamentally inconsistent with the suggestion that our client had deliberately attempted to hide the connection.  We repeatedly challenged the evidential basis upon which the TRA had pursued the case. A substantial part of the original case had been founded upon an internal investigation report containing findings, opinions and conclusions which we argued were inadmissible and irrelevant.

Prior to the final hearing, extensive submissions were also made concerning hearsay, opinion evidence and other disputed material. Significant parts of the material upon which the TRA had sought to rely were excluded.

When the TRA’s witnesses eventually gave evidence, the weaknesses in the case became even clearer. The evidence confirmed the extraordinary pressures facing the school, the need for agency staff and the fact that he agency run by a family member had supplied staff who were needed to keep the school operating safely. The evidence also failed to establish any financial motive on our client’s part.

After the TRA closed its case, the allegation that our client had made or intended to secure a financial benefit for a family member was discontinued.

We then made an application for the remaining allegations to be dismissed.

We submitted that there was simply no evidence from which the Panel could properly find that our client had acted dishonestly or without integrity. The TRA had failed to establish the necessary state of mind for dishonesty. To the contrary, the evidence of prior disclosure and the circumstances in which our client had been working provided obvious alternative explanations for the omission from the declaration form.

We further submitted that an administrative failure to record the family connection on a form, taken at its highest, could not amount to unacceptable professional conduct or conduct capable of bringing the teaching profession into disrepute.

The Outcome

The application succeeded.

In relation to dishonesty, the Panel found that the TRA had produced no evidence establishing our client’s required state of mind. There was nothing to demonstrate that the omission had been deliberate or motivated by any improper purpose. The Panel recognised that there were credible alternative explanations, including simple oversight, particularly given the extreme circumstances in which our client was working.

The Panel therefore found no case to answer on dishonesty.

It reached the same conclusion in relation to lack of integrity. The Panel found that the evidence did not demonstrate a lack of integrity and instead showed our client to have been a committed Deputy Headteacher acting in the best interests of the school and its pupils during a period of crisis. That allegation was also dismissed.

This left only the admitted failure properly to record the family connection on the declaration form. The Panel concluded that, even if proved, the conduct had no reasonable prospect of amounting to unacceptable professional conduct or conduct bringing the profession into disrepute.

Significantly, the Panel concluded that it would offend its “sense of justice and propriety” to require our client to continue defending professional disciplinary proceedings over conduct which was not sufficiently serious to warrant proceedings of this nature.

The entire case was dismissed

After more than three years of professional uncertainty, our client left the proceedings without any finding of dishonesty, lack of integrity or professional misconduct and without any sanction against his teaching career.

The case demonstrates the importance of testing not simply whether an error has occurred, but whether there is evidence capable of transforming that error into serious professional misconduct. Regulators must distinguish between genuine dishonesty and an innocent administrative omission, particularly where the surrounding evidence points overwhelmingly towards the latter.

Comments from Jared McNally

“From the beginning, our position was that this case had been allowed to proceed without proper consideration of what the admissible evidence actually proved.

Our client accepted that a declaration form should have been completed differently. What he never accepted was the enormous leap from that administrative mistake to allegations of financial motivation, dishonesty and lack of integrity.

The evidence showed that the family connection was known to others, that our client was not responsible for recruiting agency staff, that there was no evidence of any financial benefit and that he was working in an exceptionally challenging school where his overriding concern was keeping vulnerable pupils safe.

Once the TRA had presented its evidence, we submitted that there was simply no case for our client to answer. The Panel agreed.

The Panel’s finding that continuing the proceedings would offend its sense of justice and propriety is particularly significant. Professional disciplinary proceedings can have devastating consequences for teachers. Allegations of dishonesty should never be pursued unless there is proper evidence capable of proving them.”

Jared McNally, Clifford Johnston & Co.

Clifford Johnston & Co is a leading defence firm in Criminal and Professional Disciplinary Law, based in Manchester and representing clients across England and Wales on a privately funded basis. We provide strategic advice and robust advocacy when your liberty or professional career is under TRA investigation or at risk.