Mr M A Nadeem v University Academy Keighley — 2019

Mr M A Nadeem began work as a geography NQT with University Academy Keighley in September 2016. The tribunal found that he faced a particularly challenging teaching load, but that in April 2017 Duncan Salter told him his overall NQT assessment was satisfactory progress and that the more difficult areas were not, at that stage, a cause for concern. The tribunal accepted that the claimant’s induction tutor and faculty leader were not warning him that he was failing to meet the standards, and found that there was no proper evidential basis for the later suggestion that his induction year might need to be extended.

The tribunal held that the intervention on 18 May 2017, when Mr Salter attended the claimant’s weekly meeting and raised the possibility of extending the NQT year, was detrimental treatment. It also found that the claimant was told he should be getting 8s for the teachers’ standards, but that this was not a general requirement for the respondent’s NQTs and that none of the claimant’s cohort or their induction tutors had been told that 8s were required in order to pass induction. The tribunal concluded that these matters placed the claimant at a disadvantage and were less favourable treatment compared with other NQTs.

The tribunal also found that the decision in January 2018 to place the claimant on red file support, without prior consultation, was detrimental treatment. Although Eilidh Barker had genuine concerns about some aspects of his teaching, the tribunal held that the respondent did not adequately explain why he was called into that process without warning if he was said to be failing to meet standards. It found that SLT involvement from the outset departed from the usual red file support procedure and that the process had been infected by race.

Applying the direct discrimination burden of proof authorities it cited, including Zafar, Shamoon, Aylott, Madarassy and Talbot, the tribunal concluded that the claimant had proved facts from which discrimination could be inferred, including the under-representation of BME staff, the surrounding industrial dispute, the unreliable parts of Duncan Salter’s evidence, and the different treatment of comparable NQTs. The respondent did not provide a complete non-discriminatory explanation, so the complaint of direct race discrimination succeeded. The tribunal also held that the conduct extended over a period ending with the January 2018 red file support decision, so the earlier complaints were in time; if they were not, time would have been extended as just and equitable. No compensation figure was fixed in this judgment, and the tribunal directed a later remedy hearing if the parties could not agree the amount.