The High Court has restrained a school’s disciplinary process against an anonymised teacher pending the determination of her court proceedings, finding a fair issue to be tried over whether the report that initiated the process was seriously flawed.
Mr Justice Dignam’s interlocutory ruling does not decide whether the allegations against the teacher are true. Nor does it finally determine whether the disciplinary process has gone irreparably wrong. The court found no fair issue on the evidence then available that the Board of Management had considered the report before hearing from the teacher.
The teacher, an Irish teacher and coordinator of the school’s Irish department, is accused in the report of using her position to seek an unfair advantage for her son in the 2020 Leaving Certificate calculated grades process. The allegations concern her communications about the level at which two students, including her son, should be graded and her involvement in the school’s subject alignment process. The judge said their merits were matters for the disciplinary process and did not set them out in detail.
The report was prepared by the principal and sent to the teacher and the Board in May 2021, initiating Stage 4 proceedings under Department of Education procedures. The judge found a fair issue that the report presented disputed matters as established findings, using terms such as “false” and “wilfully misled”. He also identified a fair issue over whether it was unbalanced, including because it omitted context potentially favourable to the teacher and did not make clear the source of some information.
The school’s Chair had said he would not participate further in the disciplinary process. The court found no fair issue, on the evidence before it, that Board members had discussed the report’s substance before the teacher could respond. It also did not find a fair issue that the principal was actually biased, or that the Chair or Board were biased. The judge said the report’s flaws could still risk tainting the process even if Board members had not considered it in advance, given the weight a principal’s report could carry.
The court also rejected the teacher’s contention that the school had no right to discipline her because the work involved was done on behalf of the Minister. It found no fair issue that starting at Stage 4 was so disproportionate that the process could not proceed. The judge considered the 7-to-14-month delay too long, but found no evidence of specific prejudice making it irreparable.
Balancing the teacher’s potential reputational harm against the school’s interest in completing the process, the judge granted an injunction restraining the school from continuing any disciplinary process based on the principal’s report, pending determination of the proceedings. The court did not grant the wider injunctions sought, continued an existing order protecting the son’s identity in relation to a medical condition, and proposed directions to prepare the case for trial.