School subjected deaf member of support staff to disability discrimination and victimisation after requiring her to work on-site during pandemic, tribunal finds

Charlotte Bentley wins employment tribunal verdict after protracted dispute with Oaks Park High School in Redbridge, north-east London

A profoundly deaf member of support staff at a large local authority comprehensive in north-east London was subjected to disability discrimination, “lied” about by management and victimised after asking to be allowed to work from home during the pandemic, an employment tribunal has concluded.

Charlotte Bentley, who has worked at Oaks Park High School in Redbridge since 2015, became anxious and depressed after the school asked her to return to work on-site in September 2020, despite having a job which had not involved direct contact with pupils and which the tribunal heard could be carried out remotely.

The school, including its headteacher Joanne Hamill, had argued that government guidance had required all school employees to be back on site, when in fact it had allowed exceptions.

When the governing body partially upheld Ms Bentley’s grievance in response, and issued a string of recommendations including that the school via Ms Hamill apologise to its employee, these were not fully carried out by the school, the tribunal concluded.

Ms Hamill did not apologise on behalf of the school to Ms Bentley after this was recommended by the governing body, the tribunal found, and its report suggested that the school had still not carried out deaf awareness training in the months after this was recommended by its own governors.

The school told me in response that Ms Bentley, who still works at Oaks Park, has “throughout continued to be a valued member of the school’s staff,” and that it acknowledged the tribunal’s findings. However, it added that it was disappointed that the efforts of the senior leadership team, to balance the needs of individual staff against those of students and the school community as a whole, had not been recognised by the tribunal.

Below is a long-read piece on the details of this case. The tribunal report itself can be read here. 

The background

Ms Bentley has been profoundly deaf since birth. In the years before the arrival of Covid-19, she had been working in the office at Oaks Park, a (non-academy) community school with 1,800 pupils. Her role was to make adaptations to class work for visually-impaired pupils, printing out material in large font.

When the pandemic arrived and schools went into lockdown for most pupils, in March 2020, Ms Bentley was allowed, like most staff, to work from home.

However, by the following August, with covid still circulating but schools poised to re-open for most pupils, all staff members were sent information about a possible return to work.

A return, however, would be challenging for Ms Bentley. She lived with her family. Her mother, as a diabetic, was at higher risk of covid, at a time when cases were rising and there was as yet no vaccine available. With Ms Bentley set to return to work, a decision was taken for her mother and sister to move to live with her grandparents, in Norfolk.

The return to school

As the 2020-21 school year began, Ms Bentley returned to Oaks Park to attend two staff training (INSET) days on-site on September 1^st and 2^nd. However, she became concerned about the working environment that would face her. As well as general concerns about the level of covid precautions, including there not being plastic screens between desks which were less than a metre apart, the specifics of her situation as a deaf person gave cause for worry. In particular, the desks in this office all faced the wall and so, because she was deaf, colleagues needing to talk to her would have to touch her on the shoulder.

In addition, the tribunal heard that Ms Bentley was concerned about her commute, via train, to work. Covid meant there could be a shortage of drivers and last-minute changes of platform, which she would not be able to hear, increasing her anxiety.

Requests to work from home

From August 24^th onwards, Ms Bentley was asking to be allowed to continue to work from home. She sent a request to do so to a deputy headteacher, Anjna Karania – nee Flack* -  with this being backed by her immediate line manager, Suzanne Owers.

However, Ms Flack responded on September 3^rd, stating that all staff were expected to return to work, in line with revised government guidelines.

“Schools have been identified as a low risk setting,” Ms Flack emailed. She added: “At present, the guidelines from August 1st have stated that all staff are able to come to work and there is no more shielding for households. Therefore, at this time, working from home is not an option as we will have the students in.”

However, in reality the Department for Education’s guidance in relation to schools was not so sweeping. Ms Bentley showed the tribunal the guidance, which, it said, said: “some roles, such as some administrative roles, may be conducive to homeworking, and school leaders should consider what is feasible and appropriate."

The difference between what this guidance said and what the school said it said would become an ongoing point of dispute in this case.

Ms Bentley then went in to school during the first week of term. However she was “very anxious, stressed” and frequently washing her hands, the tribunal found. By 9^th September, “she found that the extreme anxiety had made her depressed, withdrawn, and she was feeling alone,” it said. She was advised to seek a meeting with Ms Flack, which duly happened, although the tribunal said communication was difficult as neither Ms Flack nor a colleague who attended with her could sign using British Sign Language (BSL) well. However, Ms Bentley was temporarily allowed home.

School re-iterates its position, over several months

Also on September 9^th, she attended a meeting with a human resources manager, Geraldine Brampah, at which she completed a “risk assessment” and “set out her concerns and her line managers’ support for her working from home”. She was told that the decision on whether or not she could work from home would be Ms Hamill’s to make.

Then, on September 10^th Ms Bentley contacted Ms Flack again, by email, setting out concerns. She referred to the DfE guidelines allowing schools discretion for staff to work from home, cited advice from her union Unison that those who could work from home should be able to do so, and warned the school that it might be discriminating against her as a deaf person.

The following day, she wrote to Ms Hamill, again requesting to work from home; she was also then signed off work for two weeks, having been diagnosed with stress by her GP. On September 15^th, Ms Bentley’s father, Stephen Bentley-Klein, wrote to Ms Flack, “clearly upset and angry” as the tribunal put it, and copying in Ms Hamill, saying that his daughter was being discriminated against by the school.

However, on September 21^st, Ms Flack wrote back to Ms Bentley, addressing her father’s email and stating that Ms Bentley had misunderstood the purpose of the meeting on September 9^th. It had not been a meeting to discuss the possibility of her working from home, but a “risk assessment to decide whether any additional strategies were needed to support her at work,” in other words to work on-site.

Ms Flack then informed Ms Bentley that, while she was not expected to be in work until October 1^st, a “a stage 1 absence meeting” had been lined up for her to attend with Emily De Grove, another deputy headteacher, “in line with the school’s absence policy”. She was also invited to report any concerns about discrimination straight to Ms Hamill.

The meeting with Ms De Grove was planned for Ms Bentley’s first scheduled day back on-site: October 1^st. However, she was not well enough to attend. So it was rescheduled to take place virtually, on October 8^th.

Ms Bentley had also been invited to submit a “flexible working application” to the school, which she duly did. In this, she argued it was possible to do her job entirely from home: she was never in the classroom, had no contact with pupils and could do her work almost entirely at the computer. The only exception to her ability to do all of this from home was needing to spend less than 10 minutes on some days printing out documents in the office. But a colleague, Suzanne Owers, had said she could take on this task for Ms Bentley.

However, the school’s position that in its view her job could not be done remotely would be an ongoing feature of this saga.

At the virtual meeting on October 8^th, the school re-iterated its position that Ms Bentley needed to return to the school, with Ms De Grove repeating the assertion that government advice allowing people to work from home “does not apply to educational settings”.

By November 25^th, with Ms Bentley still off sick, Ms De Grove had written to her to say that the flexible working request had been rejected, and that Ms Bentley was being referred for an occupational health assessment.

On November 30^th, Ms Bentley wrote to the school’s chair of governors, Mohammed Omer, asking to file a grievance against the headteacher, Ms Hamill, and the two deputies, Ms Flack and Ms De Grove.

On December 7^th, Ms Hamill formally rejected Ms Bentley’s flexible working request. On December 16^th, Ms Bentley attended the occupational health referral by zoom, at which the doctor diagnosed anxiety and a “collapse in self-confidence”. He stated that the Equality Act was likely to apply, and that while Ms Bently was fit to work, “at present, this must be well-managed from home,” adding that this “would enable her to rebuild her confidence in herself, in her work and in the school”.

On January 5^th, 2021, the school held a “stage 2 absence review meeting” virtually, with Ms Bentley in attendance. In a follow-up email, Ms Bentley reminded Ms Flack of the flexibility within the government guidance. In response, Ms Flack acknowledged – this appears from the tribunal report’s record to be the first time the school had done this – that Ms Bentley had quoted the DfE guidance correctly “when it stated that school leaders should consider what is feasible and appropriate when considering whether working from home is workable or not.” In other words, that there was flexibility to allow home working if the school had deemed it appropriate and possible for the staff member.

When Ms Flack wrote to Ms Bentley with the outcome of the stage 2 absence review meeting, on January 30^th, it was to inform her that a range of covid mitigations had been put in place, including changing Ms Bentley’s desk so it was no longer facing the wall, and that she would be expected in work on February 2^nd. Confusingly perhaps given the acknowledgement above, Ms Flack also re-iterated the school’s position that, from September 2020 government guidance had been “stating that staff are required to attend work to support running the school”.

A “return to work” meeting then took place on February 3^rd, and Ms Bentley, having been signed off sick from work completely, began to carry out her adaptation work remotely, from home.

The grievance

The tribunal’s report then moved on to the next stage of this story: the grievance. This was held by the school’s vice-chair of governors, Keith Gardner, with Mr Omer having decided to stand back in case he was needed to chair a grievance appeal hearing.

He interviewed Ms Flack, Ms De Grove and Ms Hamill on February 4^th, with Ms De Grove then re-interviewed on February 22^nd.

This is where Ms Bentley’s claims against the school’s senior leadership became central to the tribunal’s eventual ruling, with the report stating that she claimed that the evidence relating to the grievance process showed that Ms Hamill, Ms Flack and Ms De Grove “told lies” about it.

They had not told the truth that Ms Bentley was “unhelpful and difficult,” she said; about the local authority’s education policy; about the DfE guidelines; and about her own staff role. Ms Bentley, said the report, relied on minutes of these grievance interviews to support her claims of direct disability and victimisation.

At the tribunal hearing, Ms Hamill was taken through notes of her interview with Mr Gardner. In these, the head was quoted saying: “We tried to do meetings very early on in her sickness absence to try and review her working conditions…these meetings were cancelled, delayed, there was barriers (put in place by [Ms Bentley])….Unfortunately, she just wouldn’t work with us and it was very frustrating and it was disappointing to be quite honest, because we've had lots of staff who had anxieties about returning to work across all schools in different work places.”

However, the tribunal concluded that it had “found that the Claimant [Ms Bentley] only requested that one meeting, the meeting scheduled for 1 October 2020, be postponed,” with Ms Bentley pointing to the school itself having cancelled two meetings with her, one seven minutes before it was due to start.

Ms Flack told Ms Gardner that she had set up the risk assessment meeting with Ms Bentley, but that “because of her hearing impairment it couldn’t be done immediately”. She added: “We have been advised by the Borough [Redbridge local authority] that we are school setting, we were fully open and all staff were expected to return.”

The tribunals’ report said Ms Flack “also blamed the Claimant for not having filled in the request for risk assessment in advance”. However, it added: “We find that the Claimant had not clearly understood the policies or what she needed to do and when; we are satisfied that her deafness was a significant factor in this.”

Ms Bentley’s deafness contributed to this case getting to the “formal” stage, the tribunal found. The report said: “We find that part of the reason the Claimant set off down the formal route of being told to apply for a flexible working request and then into the grievance route was because she was unable to have a one-to-one discussion with her line manager or Ms Flack, either on the 2nd, 3rd or 9th of September 2020 and the reason for that was the Claimant's deafness, Ms Flack was not available to speak to the Claimant on 2nd or 3 September when she had a BSL interpreter with her and there was no BSL interpreter available on 9 September when the Claimant went to her in distress.” 

The report then stated that Ms Hamill had confirmed – seemingly to the tribunal itself – that “she had considered the Claimant [Ms Bentley] was being difficult”.

But it added: “When asked to specify how, or in what way, the Claimant was being difficult, [Ms Hamill] referred to the delay in the first sickness absence review meeting. When taken to the relevant documents she accepted that it was due to the Claimant being off sick and having requested a Google Meet meeting instead of in-person meeting; she also accepted that the Claimant attended the rearranged remote meeting.  Ms Hamill said she believed there were other occasions but she could not point to any. She could not provide any other examples or recall the basis for her comments that the Claimant was not adhering to the expectation of an employee who is off work.”

Ms Flack had been asked by Mr Gardner whether Ms Bentley could do her work at home. She had responded that she had spoken to Suzanne Owers, Ms Bentley’s line manager, and that the latter had said that no-one would be able to provide Ms Bentley with work if she (Ms Owers) was off. Therefore, Ms Flack told Mr Gardner, Ms Owers had “confirmed” that Ms Bentley was not able to do her work from home “fully”.

But the tribunal concluded: “We are satisfied that Ms Owers did not say to Ms Flack that it would not be possible for the Claimant to work from home and nor did she say that it would not be possible if Ms Owers was off work for anyone else to co-ordinate the Claimant’s work in her absence.”

The report stated that in her interview with Mr Gardner on February 4^th, Ms De Grove had said that Ms Bentley’s disability was “not relevant”.

In her second interview with Mr Gardner, on February 22^nd , Ms De Grove said that Ms Bentley was classed as a teaching assistant, and might be needed in school to “support students which she might not be able to do from home, particularly if it was a key worker student or VI [visually impaired] students in school.”

However, the report said Ms Bentley told the tribunal “that she was not a TA [teaching assistant] and had never…worked face to face with students, nor would she be able to”.

Ms Bentley would make the point during the tribunal hearing that it was “ridiculous” to expect her to work with visually impaired pupils, given that she was a deaf person only communicating in BSL.

Ms Hamill also told Mr Gardner that Ms Bentley’s work could not be carried out from home without a “significant impact” on the school. The head said: “We don't have a system in place for working from home.  Schools are not worked out like that…it was going to add an extra layer of work to the team, a team that was already under considerable pressure.”

However, when Mr Gardner interviewed Lesley Carty, who managed the school’s inclusion team, she told him that Ms Bentley’s job “could be carried out from home without any significant impact upon the school”. The printing at the end of the day was “not a large amount of work,” Ms Owers was happy to do it and, if she was not in, Ms Carty herself and other team members could pass on the work to Ms Bentley. Ms Carty added that she would have been supportive of Ms Bentley’s flexible working request if she had been asked.

The report added that Ms Carty “believed that if the management team sat down with her and Suzanne Owers to find out exactly what the Claimant did and how her role was carried out…they could have addressed the problems with the Claimant more informally and could have resolved the issues of concern, but the only response they got about the Claimant's request for working from home was ‘all support staff need to be on site’."

The report then stated that Ms Bentley “was very upset on reading the notes of the grievance interviews with Ms de Grove, Ms Flack and Ms Hamill.  She took issue with the references to her being required to work with students or in the classroom and told us in evidence, that she had never worked in the classroom; that the suggestion was ridiculous, the students were visually impaired and the Claimant can only communicate via British sign language, so there was no way for her to communicate with the students; and that she had never been required to have one-to-one contact or any contact with students in the classroom and would not be expected to in the future.” 

The tribunal added: “We accept the Claimant’s evidence which is supported by the witness statements and oral evidence from her colleagues Ms Owers and Ms Carty who worked with her most directly and closely… we are satisfied that the Claimant was never expected or required to work in the classroom with visually impaired students but rather in the office as part of the inclusion team providing support by adapting materials.”

The tribunal also stated that, in her evidence to it, Ms De Grove had “accepted that she [had been] mistaken and that the Claimant had never worked with students”. Ms De Grove’s description of Ms Bentley’s role, in her second interview with Mr Gardner on February 22^nd, “was not an accurate portrayal,” the tribunal found.

The tribunal then considered Ms Hamill’s statements, in her interview with Mr Gardner on February 4^th, relating to the local authority’s advice on schools and working from home.

Ms Hamill had told Mr Gardner: “Schools were built on a face-to-face environment that is the way we ran/organised the school.  We clarified this a number of times with the Local Authority because all head teachers were coming up against these requests for working from home.  If they had been allowed, we would not have been able to open…it was made very clear by the local authority : it [working from home] doesn’t apply to schools….It was the same consistent message from the [LA] Director of Education that schools are face-to-face environments and it [WFH] didn't apply to school environment.”

Ms De Grove had told Mr Gardner that Ms Bentley had been told that general national guidance that “if you can still work from home, work from home” did not apply to schools.

But the tribunal said it was “satisfied” that DfE guidance including that “Some roles, such as some administrative roles, may be conducive to homeworking, and school leaders should consider what is feasible and appropriate” had been in place at the time.

The tribunal also said that the local authority’s position was put to Ms Hamill in evidence and that “she did not dispute that later in February the local authority’s position was that some working from home might be needed to be supported”**.

The report also stated that, on May 13^th, 2021, Mr Bentley-Klein had received an email from Redbridge local authority “in respect of the education policy in September 2020”.

This had stated: “The council did not and does not have a policy about staff working on school site or working remotely during periods of lockdowns.  This is a matter for individual governing bodies.”

Grievance outcome, and response from Ms Hamill

On February 22^nd, so the same day as he interviewed Ms De Grove, Mr Gardner sent the outcome of his grievance decision to Ms Bentley.

He upheld some elements of the grievance, and issued a formal apology on behalf of the school. He recommended that the senior leadership team “and relevant staff” undertake deaf awareness training, “and that they must communicate more fully with the Claimant in regard to proposed changes in the workplace”.

The report added that Mr Gardner “also recommended if the Senior Leadership team wished to speak directly to the Claimant they should make time to meet with her and to have a BSL translator present to ensure that the Claimant was fully supported in any discussion. In respect of the Claimant's request to work from home he understood that the Claimant was at that time currently working from home until April 2021 as a reasonable adjustment. He observed that it seemed sensible that the school consider allowing her to continue working from home, until she felt able to return to the workplace, as part of a support package rather than any flexible working procedure.”

Mr Gardner then set out 10 “immediate action points” for the school to take: three to be taken when Ms Bentley returned to the school site, and seven future actions.

But Ms Hamill appeared not have been pleased with this outcome.

The report stated that, writing back on March 3^rd, she described Ms Bentley as having been “’manipulative’ in using the system and “stated that the Claimant was making outrageous claims about discrimination and bullying, and that all reasonable adjustments requested were implemented in respect of the Claimant's role.”

She added: “It was perceived that [Mr Gardner’s] recommendations could undermine [the] school's ability to manage personnel matters, as the perception was that it was OK to undermine and refuse to follow policies by making outrageous claims about discrimination and bullying.”

Ms Hamill also objected to a finding by Mr Gardner relating to Ms Bentley’s claim that she “became unwell due to the poor safety within [her] office and management refusal to give consideration to her working request”.

And she pointed to an email from September 9^th, 2020, from a friend of Ms Bentley who had human resources experience, which had been presented during the grievance process, alongside an email from Ms Bentley two days later, as an “example of how the school had been manipulated and left without capacity due to [Ms Bentley’s] actions”.

The tribunal considered the email sent by Ms Bentley’s friend. In this, the friend had advised that Ms Bentley could either wait for the school’s decision on home working and, if it went in her favour, could work from home, or go to her GP and “ask to be signed off with stress for a couple of weeks”. This would then force “the school to look at ways of supporting Charlotte”.

The report concluded in Ms Bentley’s favour on this.

It stated: “We find that the Claimant was experiencing distress, anxiety depression and OCD symptoms at this time and that her concerns about going into the workplace were genuinely held... We also find that the HR advice given indirectly to the Claimant was an accurate assessment of the options open to her in the circumstances. We do not find that receiving or following advice from someone with HR experience can fairly be described as being manipulative.”

It continued: “Ms Hamill told us that she described the Claimant’s claims [in her grievance] as ‘outrageous’ because the claims were unsubstantiated in relation to discrimination. She maintained that the claims were unsubstantiated in spite of Mr Gardner’s findings that there had been discrimination; telling us that she disagreed with his findings, it was still her view the were unsubstantiated.”

Mr Gardner had not, however, uphold Ms Bentley’s complaint that the school had been in breach of the Equality Act 2010 through its treatment of her.

Grievance appeal

So, on March 6^th, 2021, Ms Bentley appealed.

The report stated: “A key plank of the Claimant's complaints in the grievance appeal was that Mr Gardner had failed to see the Claimant's hearing impairment as a major cause of her anxiety and poor mental health;  that he had accepted the school's insistence that she had always been a TA [teaching assistant] and had  believed what Ms Hamill had said about what the Claimant did in her role and would have to do in the future, including work with visually impaired students, even though she is a BSL signer and blind students would not be able to see her hands.”

Mr Omer himself heard the grievance appeal, at a meeting on April 20^th which was held both virtually and in-person at the school.

Governors had sought further answers from Ms Hamill and, in answers which the head sent them on April 23^rd, she had said: “CB [Charlotte Bentley] had previously work[ed] one-to-one with students…with hearing impairments.”

The tribunal concluded: “Ms Hamill was unable to explain with any certainty where this information come from. She told us it may have come from the previous Headteacher but that she had no direct experience or knowledge of the Claimant having worked directly with students. We accept the Claimant’s evidence that she had never done this. We found her to be an honest witness and are satisfied that she was in a better position than Ms Hamill to know what work she had done in the past.” 

On June 11^th, Mr Omer wrote to Ms Bentley setting out the findings of the appeal.

The report stated: “In summary the appeal panel considered that the school did fail to make reasonable adjustments with regards to not allowing the Claimant to work from home or exploring how her role or job description could be adjusted to allow her to work from home. The panel felt that the school also failed to make reasonable adjustments by failing to assess the working environment within the school in relation to where the Claimant was sitting…The panel did not uphold the complaint that she was directly discriminated against but did feel that she was subjected to unfavourable treatment as a result of indirect discrimination, in that there were decisions taken, criteri[a] applied and processes followed by the school that apply to everyone that had a detrimental impact on the Claimant because of her disability. 

“The panel expressed that it understood how the Claimant might have felt the behaviour towards the Claimant was oppressive but found no evidence to support the claim that it was bullying and victimisation and did not uphold that part of the grievance appeal.”

The appeal outcome also said: “We would like to fully endorse the recommendations made by Mr Gardner…  For completeness, this is with regards to a formal apology on behalf of the school, that all SLT and relevant staff undertake deaf awareness training, that the school must communicate more fully with you with regard to proposed changes within the workplace, for them to be more receptive to your needs and requirements and that your period of absence from work due to ill-health from mid-September 2020 until early February 2021, is not counted towards any absence management trigger, nor should the payments made to you during that time, to sick pay entitlement."

But the tribunal report then continued: “In spite of both Mr Gardner and Mr Omer, the Vice Chair and Chair of Governors respectively, accepting that the school had discriminated against the Claimant, Ms Hamill maintained a steadfast denial that this was the case. She maintained that the Governors and the Chair had been given the wrong advice by HR in finding for the Claimant that there had been discrimination on any point. Ms Hamill maintained that had the Claimant come to the school and cited her deafness as the reason that she was asking for working from home then that would have been treated as a request for reasonable adjustments but she did not cite her deafness, she cited the vulnerability of a family member [and stress and anxiety].”

Ms Hamill had not herself apologised on behalf of the school to Ms Bentley, the report then revealed.

It stated: “On being asked if she had provided the apology recommended by Mr Gardner, a recommendation endorsed by Mr Omer, Ms Hamill told the tribunal that she was not asked to write a formal apology and she considered that the content of Mr Omer’s letter conferred the apology, and it was not necessary for her as Headteacher to write to the Claimant. Nor were we taken to any evidence that Ms Hamill or the SLT had taken steps to put in place the deaf awareness training also recommended by the Governors. We are satisfied having seen and heard Ms Hamill give evidence that this was also a reflection of a hostile response to the claimant’s discrimination claims.” 

Tribunal’s conclusions

The tribunal found that Ms Bentley had been subjected to direct disability discrimination by the school, endorsing her claim that senior management had told “lies”. Ms Hamill had said in grievance interviews that Ms Bentley was “unhelpful and difficult”. But this had been an unfair characterisation.

The tribunal found: “Having heard Ms Hamill’s evidence the Tribunal are satisfied that she had formed the view that the Claimant was being difficult and unhelpful, we have also found that this was an unfair and unfounded characterisation.  We find that Ms Hamill did not take into account or consider that the Claimant might, as a deaf person, experience particular difficulties either in respect of communication, or understanding the school’s processes.”

It added: “We find that Ms Hamill made negative assumptions about the Claimant’s actions based on how she expected a hearing person to act. We find that the Claimant's deafness was a barrier to communication and that none of her managers were able to sign or understand BSL. Nor did they consider that she may have different communication needs as a deaf person.”

The tribunal also found that Ms Bentley had been subjected to direct disability discrimination after Ms De Grove said that Ms Owers had said it would have been very difficult to allocate work to Ms Bentley if she was working at home, and that Ms Bentley could work with students face-to-face and that she had worked with them in the past.

Yet this position, found the tribunal, “was not a statement which Ms De Grove could have reasonably and honestly made had she addressed her mind to the Claimant's deafness and the obvious difficulty she would have in communicating with visually impaired students in sign language.”

Ms Bentley’s BSL interpreter, Angela Starr, had also been “reprimanded” by Ms De Grove after a meeting in September 2021 at which Ms Starr had asked other participants not to talk over each other, as she could not communicate their words to Ms Bentley. A member of staff had complained about this, and Ms De Grove then “spoke to Ms Starr about her tone,” though Ms Starr had argued it had been “polite”.

The school then rearranged departmental staff meetings so that Ms Bentley was only present for some of them. Ms Bentley felt “excluded” by this decision. The tribunal found that this “unfavourable treatment” had not been “justified”. It therefore upheld Ms Bentley’s contention that this was direct disability discrimination. 

The tribunal found that Ms Hamill’s “unfair and unfounded” characterisation of Ms Bentley as “difficult and unhelpful”; her negative reaction to Ms Bentley’s claim of discrimination; and her refusal to accept the outcome of Ms Bentley’s grievance did amount to “victimisation”.

Ms De Grove’s “misrepresentation” of Ms Bentley’s role in her second interview to Mr Gardner also amounted to “victimisation”.

Finally, it came to a conclusion suggesting that disability discrimination which Ms Bentley experienced had continued in the school, even after the grievance process, relating this to the experience with Ms Starr.

Remarkably perhaps, the report suggested that the, during 2023 the school had still not implemented deaf awareness training, despite this having been recommended by its governing body back in 2021.

It stated: ”We have found… that there is a link between the act of discrimination on 24 September [2021], reprimanding the Claimant’s BSL interpreter and the earlier acts about which she complained going back to 1 September 2020. We are satisfied that it was part of an ongoing state of affairs of discrimination against the Claimant as a deaf person.  We note that deaf awareness training had not taken place by September 2021, despite the Governors’ recommendation.  There is no evidence before us of deaf awareness training for the period from February 2021 to September 2021, nor was there any evidence that this had then taken place in 2023.  If it had taken place by September 2021, we would not expect Ms De Grove to have handled the incident in relation to the meeting with the BSL interpreter in the way that she did.”

The report also revealed that the tribunal had reached its conclusions back in March 2024, even though the outcome only emerged in public through this document’s publication last month (January 2025).  The judge apologised for this delay which, it was stated, was “largely due to increased pressure upon Administrative and Judicial resources”.

The tribunal has yet to decide how much money Ms Bentley should receive in consequence.

Despite all of the stress of this case, Ms Bentley did return to school and is still employed at Oaks Park.

School’s reaction

I sought comment from Oaks Park on the case.

It said in a statement: “Following the recent tribunal judgement, the school wishes to note that the employee who brought the claim has throughout continued to be a valued member of the school’s staff. While disappointed with the outcome, the school acknowledges the tribunal’s findings, reflecting as they do the very serious and unique pressures that the Covid-19 pandemic put on educational establishments during what was a very challenging time.

“The Senior Leadership Team at the school strove to balance the needs of individual employees against the needs of students and the school community as a whole. The school is disappointed that these efforts were not recognised by the tribunal in this case. Nevertheless, the school is determined to continue with its well-established work to celebrate diversity and inclusion in its workplace. At this time, it would not be appropriate to comment any further on this matter, given that the tribunal process has not yet concluded.”

I had asked the school if it had implemented governing body recommendations, now, and whether Ms Hamill had apologised to Ms Bentley, but there were no responses on these specific points, with its statement published in full above.

 

*The tribunal report states that Ms Karania was known as Ms Flack at the time of the events covered by the report, and it refers to her by this latter name. So this is the name used in this piece.

** It is not clear what “later in February” means here. It may be that Ms Hamill meant that this was the local authority’s position, at least as of February 2021, though of course the disagreement with Ms Bentley had begun in September 2020.