Victimised teacher awarded €127,000
Margaret McGinn had been teaching for 23 years at St Anthony’s Boys National School in Kilcoole, Co Wicklow, when she applied for the principal’s job in 2001. A member of the interview board asked her if it would be a problem to have a woman principal as a role model, considering there were so few men working in education.
Ms McGinn said the chair of the school board, Fr Eamon Clarke, who also chaired the interview board, later told her and colleagues in the staff room that it would not be appropriate to appoint her as principal to an all-boys’ school. She also said she was being victimised.
The equality officer found Ms McGinn was asked a discriminatory question at the interview which breached the Employment Equality Act and she was subjected to victimisation for making a complaint to the Equality Tribunal.
She ordered the school board to pay the 48-year-old teacher €10,000 for the stress suffered as a result of the discriminatory question, noting it was exacerbated by the board chairman’s comments in the staff room. The equality officer also ordered the school to pay her more than €117,000, equivalent to the maximum award of two years’ salary, for the victimisation.
The school has appealed the ruling and a Labour Court hearing on the matter is expected later this year or early in 2005.
Ms McGinn said yesterday that the decision to pursue the case was not easy but she felt the matter had to be addressed because of the level of discrimination involved. She is still teaching at the school.
“I’m told it’s the largest award ever made by the Equality Tribunal but the money is definitely not the reason I brought the case. Selection procedures for appointing principals to primary schools should be more professional and transparent as a result of the decision,” she said.
The full ruling has not yet been published but the equality officer recommended that suitable training be provided for school interview boards and that they should have an independent chairperson.
The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO), which represented Ms McGinn, has recommended action on the gender imbalance in principals’ positions. “The findings in this case raise fundamental issues for the interview, selection and appointment of principal teachers,” INTO general secretary John Carr said.
An INTO report earlier this year showed that, while fewer than one-fifth of primary teachers are men, male staff account for half the country’s 3,300 primary school principals.
A recent Employment Appeals Tribunal hearing was told a female principal at a Co Wexford secondary school was suspended after the board investigated her management based on complaints by teachers. It found Rita Fitzgerald was constructively dismissed from her job at St Mary’s CBS in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, and ruled that she be reinstated. The tribunal ruled she was correct to reprimand two teachers who had been working in another school and that the investigation into her management by the school did not follow fair and proper procedures.
