| SPOTLIGHT |
A judge has overturned a teaching ban on a ‘superhead’ who channeled work to a company with which he was associated.
The indefinite ban was imposed by the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL), which said Greg Wallace should wait two years before applying for it to be lifted.
But Holgate J said Mr Wallace’s the issues were finely balanced and education secretary Justine Greening should have instead simply published the finding of his misconduct hearing.
The judgment noted that Mr Wallace had between 1999 and 2004 been the company secretary of a C2 Technology and was later in a relationship with one of its directors.
Five schools joined in a federation of which he was the overall head paid sums totalling £1.073m to C2 between 2008 and 2013, when a London Borough of Hackney audit found and investigated the payments.
Mr Wallace was later dismissed for serious professional misconduct after giving “little or no reasonable explanation as to why [he] had not included governors of schools in the process of awarding valuable contracts to one contractor” and for misusing his official position to favour C2 and pursuing “malicious and vexatious grievances” to try to delay the disciplinary investigation.
His case then went to a professional conduct panel of the NCTL, which recommended no prohibition order.
The Department for Education though rejected this and imposed the indefinite prohibition.
Mr Wallace’s appeal succeeded on the grounds that Ms Greening was wrong in that she failed to consider publication of the PCP’s conclusion on misconduct as a sanction, the sufficiency of such a sanction and the ‘proportionality’ of the prohibition.
The judge went on to overturn the prohibition on Mr Wallace teaching. He said: “I have reached the clear conclusion that there is a combination of exceptional features which should lead the court to deal with the matter itself…rather than remit it to the respondent for a redetermination.” This was because the panel found that Mr Wallace had shown “great insight” into his misconduct and demonstrated how that would be avoided in future.
The department “accepted those findings, but then failed to explain how prohibiting the appellant from teaching for a period of at least two years, so that he might reflect on his actions, might produce any material change or serve any useful purpose”, the judge said.
“The respondent did not suggest that the appellant had failed to show sufficient insight, or that the period of two years would allow even greater insight to be obtained which would materially facilitate his future application for the order to be set aside. This point made in the decision letter was entirely hollow.”
