A teacher at a Dublin secondary school has claimed at the Workplace Relations Commission that she was unfairly penalised by the school principal to punish her for signing a collective grievance, which raised staff concerns about student discipline problems and other matters.
Jennifer Clancy told a hearing that the principal of Templeogue College, Niamh Quinn, designed a timetable that deliberately conflicted with Ms Clancy’s family circumstances in order to punish her for having put her name to the grievance document.
The WRC heard that Ms Clancy joined Templeogue College in 2018 having previously worked at a school in Sutton.
A teacher of Spanish, she took a part-time job at Templeogue College because it was close to her house and working part-time there would enable her to balance work with caring for her two small children.
Ms Clancy said she had an agreement with Templeogue College that until her children were older she would be timetabled to work mainly morning hours so that she would be able to care for her children in the afternoon.
She said for four years this was the case.
The hearing, before Adjudicator Breffni O’Neill, heard that Ms Quinn was appointed principal of Templeogue College in 2019.
Ms Clancy said that initially she had a very positive working relationship with Ms Quinn who was of a similar age to her.
According to evidence given at the hearing, by 2020 teachers at the school had serious concerns about a number of issues, among them a deterioration of discipline towards students.
Ms Clancy said there had been a severe drop in discipline standards and that this was a “really massive” issue for staff.
Outlining the circumstances which led to her and several of her colleagues signing a grievance, she said there was “a feeling of lawlessness” at the school and that staff did not feel safe.
Saying that students felt they “had the run of the place” she outlined an incident where a student threw a phone which hit her in the chest, and another where a student filmed a female teacher’s bottom. On both of those occasions and on other occasions, she said teachers were concerned that students were not receiving appropriate sanctions.
Teachers at the all boys school were also concerned that a rest area which they had used to congregate during breaks was removed without consultation over the summer months and that CCTV was being used to monitor senior staff without their consent.
In February 2022 teachers submitted the collective grievance.
Ms Clancy told the WRC that she signed the document in order to bring about a better and safer working environment for the staff and for students, but she said there was “no way” she would have signed it had she known what she would have to endure as a result.
Ms Clancy said Ms Quinn took the complaint as a personal affront to her and that as a teacher on a reduced timetable for family reasons she was “an easy target”.
Ms Clancy said that there was a complete change in the demeanour of the principal, and of how she treated her.
She said that the following August she received a timetable in keeping with that of previous years with her 11 hours clustered in the mornings and allocating to her the year groups that she had been teaching the previous year.
However, just days prior to commencement of the school year this timetable was radically altered. Ms Clancy was given afternoon classes on four out of five weekdays and allocated new year groups that she had not previously taught.
Ms Clancy told the hearing that she thought this was a mistake because it was so contrary to any timetable she had received before, but when she contacted the principal, Ms Quinn told her that the timetable was non-negotiable. She said Ms Quinn’s manner was “very curt and cold”.
“This was a punishment”, Ms Clancy told the hearing. “In my four years I had never been required to teach in the afternoon”. At a subsequent meeting, Ms Clancy told the principal and deputy principal of the school that she felt she had been victimised as a result of signing the grievance complaint.
Describing this meeting, Ms Clancy said the principal was openly aggressive to her, and that she had never in her life been spoken to as she was on that day. She described how an autoimmune disease brought on by stress flared up, and that she was in a state of extreme stress.
“I had no childcare. Nobody to mind the kids”, she said, adding that this was the whole point of her part-time contract.
She described the principal as “in a frenzied state” at this meeting and “shouting and aggressive”. She said after the meeting she thought of resigning because she was so upset. The hearing heard that Ms Quinn will give a different account of this meeting.
Shortly after that meeting Ms Clancy went on sick leave and she received notice in the post of a disciplinary procedure being taken against her.
She told the WRC that she “was absolutely gobsmacked” and had no idea what the disciplinary procedure related to.
“I felt the principal was threatening my job, my future employability, and my reputation, and the fact that there was no detail as to what this related to was my main concern”, she said
Ms Clancy said she “was 100% sure that the principal was willing to use everything in her arsenal in retaliation for me having signed the grievance document”.
The hearing is continuing.
