A Catholic Primary School did not have a practice or policy of hiring less experienced (and younger) teachers.
Facts
From April 2012, Mrs Bradley was employed by St Edward’s Catholic Primary School on a series of fixed-term contracts. She qualified as a teacher later in life when she was aged 50, but had ten years of experience in the profession. As such, she worked in a variety of roles including senior positions such as Assistant Head Teacher and Deputy Head Teacher.
In December 2016, the School encouraged Mrs Bradley to apply for a new permanent role as a teacher in Year 2. There were nine other applications besides Mrs Bradley, all aged under 35.
Mrs Bradley’s application was poor, but it was given more consideration that other applications because of her service and experience at the School. However, after much consideration, the School rejected her application.
After this rejection, Mrs Bradley went on sick leave in March 2017. Her fixed-term contract was due to expire on 31 August 2017. There were no open vacancies so Mrs Bradley’s employment with the School terminated upon expiration of her contract. She was 60 years old.
Mrs Bradley brought a claim of indirect age discrimination, claiming that the School wanted to replace her with a teacher on a lower pay scale. She argued that this was indirect age discrimination - older teachers would tend to have more experience and be paid at the higher end of the pay scale and so would be disadvantaged by that policy.
Decision
The Employment Tribunal was unable to find evidence that there was an intention to appoint someone on a lower salary scale than Mrs Bradley. The School was willing to accept a range of experience levels and had budgeted to pay the role at the higher end of the pay scale. Accordingly, the School had not applied a provision, criterion or practice that the person appointed would be on the lower end of the pay scale for qualified teachers which could put older workers at a disadvantage.
The claim of indirect age discrimination therefore failed.
The judgment is available here.
Bradley v The Governing Body of St Edward’s Catholic Primary School: 2424586/2017