Two weeks ago Richard Dunne, former head teacher at Ashley CofE primary school, received a letter from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS). The letter said that having reviewed the evidence it had been sent by the Good Shepherd Trust (GST) on 10 Dec last year, it saw no need to take any further action.
Mr Dunne is not and will not be barred or limited in any way from working with children in future. Good news.
However the DBS reserved the right to review the decision based on any findings by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA).
The TRA investigation was a bigger deal than the DBS review as both the GST and Mr Dunne had the opportunity to submit additional evidence beyond whatever the GST had sent to trigger the TRA investigation.
Mr Dunne spent many hours putting his case together, and sent it off several weeks ago, along with the 380 letters of support he received from parents, ex-parents, staff, ex-colleagues and former pupils.
Yesterday Mr Dunne received the result of the TRA investigation.
All allegations against him have been thrown out.
The letter says:
"The Teaching Regulation Authority has completed its investigation. The determination meeting has concluded that your case should be closed with no further action."
The TRA says someone called a Decision Maker looked at everything, and had to ponder whether any of them "even at their highest... amount to potentially serious misconduct" [my italics]
After listing every allegation (including the Chamonix trip safeguarding nonsense, the alleged catering racket and Mr Dunne's alleged failing to book on a safeguarding course) and noting the further representations made by both the GST and Mr Dunne, the TRA says:
"Having considered all the information, the Decision Maker does not consider that this case should proceed to a Professional Conduct Panel. [The] TRA now considers this matter closed."
So the Decision Maker's conclusion was that the GST allegations were so weak, they should be slung out at the first instance.
This is a huge victory for Mr Dunne and indeed all the parents who have been campaigning on his behalf. Let's not forget he was suddenly removed from his job in the first week of this school year and was left completely (and deliberately*) isolated. He and his family have been put through hell with no apology or support from his employer.
Now - ten months on - two independent investigations have found the GST's allegations to be baseless.
I have spoken to Mr Dunne. He told me his over-riding emotion is one of relief. He wrote to me to say:
* See timeline, 3 October 2019.
Mr Dunne is not and will not be barred or limited in any way from working with children in future. Good news.
However the DBS reserved the right to review the decision based on any findings by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA).
The TRA investigation was a bigger deal than the DBS review as both the GST and Mr Dunne had the opportunity to submit additional evidence beyond whatever the GST had sent to trigger the TRA investigation.
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| Charlotte and Richard Dunne |
Mr Dunne spent many hours putting his case together, and sent it off several weeks ago, along with the 380 letters of support he received from parents, ex-parents, staff, ex-colleagues and former pupils.
Yesterday Mr Dunne received the result of the TRA investigation.
All allegations against him have been thrown out.
The letter says:
"The Teaching Regulation Authority has completed its investigation. The determination meeting has concluded that your case should be closed with no further action."
The TRA says someone called a Decision Maker looked at everything, and had to ponder whether any of them "even at their highest... amount to potentially serious misconduct" [my italics]
After listing every allegation (including the Chamonix trip safeguarding nonsense, the alleged catering racket and Mr Dunne's alleged failing to book on a safeguarding course) and noting the further representations made by both the GST and Mr Dunne, the TRA says:
"Having considered all the information, the Decision Maker does not consider that this case should proceed to a Professional Conduct Panel. [The] TRA now considers this matter closed."
So the Decision Maker's conclusion was that the GST allegations were so weak, they should be slung out at the first instance.
This is a huge victory for Mr Dunne and indeed all the parents who have been campaigning on his behalf. Let's not forget he was suddenly removed from his job in the first week of this school year and was left completely (and deliberately*) isolated. He and his family have been put through hell with no apology or support from his employer.
Now - ten months on - two independent investigations have found the GST's allegations to be baseless.
I have spoken to Mr Dunne. He told me his over-riding emotion is one of relief. He wrote to me to say:
"We are so pleased that the nightmare of the past year is now over. It has been the most difficult time of our lives and I cannot put into words the pain and the suffering we have gone through after 18 years at the school. We have grieved so much. What the Trust did and the way it went about it was wrong and I hope now that they will be held to account for their actions. I have said all along that if there were any concerns last year, they should have been discussed through a fair and dignified process. That did not happen. Instead, I was put under unreasonable pressure to manage the largest primary school in the Trust with a reduced leadership team and I was told to oversee another Trust school. In addition, because I challenged the way the Trust was working, I was targeted behind my back over several months. The lengths to which the Trust went to find any fault in anything I did was extraordinary. At last, justice has been done. The sadness is, that this should never have happened. It has caused so many people so much upset. I want to thank the amazing Ashley School community for all their incredible support during such a challenging time."Mr Dunne says he is going to sit down and have a good think with his family about what to do next. He still has a claim in for constructive dismissal, and I suspect the two letters he has recently received don't do his case any harm at all.
* See timeline, 3 October 2019.
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