£60k for bullied teacher forced out in row over pupil’s late homework

A TEACHER was forced to quit his job at a leading private school after he reprimanded a pupil for handing in her homework late.

Daniel Goodey came under pressure from the school to apologise to the girl, after he ‘sighed in frustration’ as she left his classroom in a ‘teenage huff’, an employment tribunal heard.

But he refused and felt he had no choice but to leave his post at The High School of Dundee. The school – one of Scotland’s best-known independents – has now been ordered to pay £60,000 to Mr Goodey.

Judge Ian McFatridge ruled that the principal teacher of religious, moral and philosophical studies had been bullied out of his job and that the school’s rector John Halliday, 64, had held ‘extremely threatening and unpleasant’ meetings with him after the incident. The tribunal heard that the teenager had been late handing in an assignment and took exception to being told to work with a classmate to finish it.

As she left, the teacher made an exasperated noise and said: ‘ Don’t walk away angry.’

The incident led to a complaint from the girl’s mother, who said her daughter no longer wanted to be taught by Mr Goodey.

Following an investigation, the school allowed the pupil not to attend his classes. Mr Goodey had 14 years of service at the school, which charges up to £13,650 a year, when he found himself wrongly accused of unprofessional conduct after he refused to write an apology.

He felt he had no option but to quit and wrote in his resignation letter last year that there are ‘serious implications for the future standards of the school when teachers become afraid of expecting pupils to do work’.

Judge McFatridge ruled that Mr Goodey had ‘ simply been carrying out his job’, and that school bosses had ‘ sought to bully the teacher into apologising’.

He said: ‘ When the teacher complained about bullying and harassment, he was faced

‘Simply carrying out his job’

with the threat of a bespoke investigation into his own conduct. When he raised a grievance, the investigation was not carried out correctly.

‘There is no doubt in my mind that the dismissal was unfair.’

The judge dismissed Mr Halliday’s evidence as ‘unreliable’, adding: ‘I am in absolutely no doubt that the claimant found the meetings between himself and the rector extremely threatening and unpleasant.’

In a letter to parents, Dundee High’s chairman, Iain Bett, wrote: ‘We are dismayed by the judgment, which we believe does not provide an accurate representation of the facts.’

He said staff members had ‘acted in good faith’ and that the school is taking legal advice as to its next steps.