Mr Adamu Thomas v The Kingsdale Foundation — 2024

The claimant, a teacher employed at the Kingsdale Foundation School since 2005, brought a claim for unauthorised deductions from wages covering February 2021 to January 2023. His 2005 contract (clauses 4 and 27(b)) incorporated the School Teachers' Pay and Conditions Document (STPCD). The respondent had introduced new pay and appraisal policies in 2013 and 2018 which moved teachers off the upper pay scale onto an internal expert teacher framework and later onto the M6 scale with top-up payments. The tribunal found that neither the 2013 nor the 2018 policy operated as a variation of the claimant's contract, so the STPCD continued to apply and the claimant could not be moved off the upper pay range while he remained at the school.

Applying section 14.1 of the STPCD, the tribunal held that a teacher on the upper pay range must be paid within the statutory minimum and maximum of that range as the relevant body determines, and that the advisory spine points are not mandatory. The respondent therefore had discretion to set pay within the range, subject to the safeguarding rule that pay could not be reduced. Comparing the amounts actually paid (excluding TLR payments but including safeguarding/TUPE top-ups) to the minimum of the upper pay range for each year produced shortfalls of £38 per annum from September 2020 and September 2021, and £1,392 for the year from September 2022.

Prorating those shortfalls across the relevant period (seven months of 2020/21, all of 2021/22, and five months of 2022/23) produced a total deduction of £640.17. The complaint of unauthorised deductions from wages was found well-founded and the respondent was ordered to pay that gross sum, with the claimant responsible for any tax or National Insurance.