EDUCATION has reached a financial settlement with the sacked head of Le Rondin School. An employment tribunal ruled last April that the department had acted unfairly when it sacked Jane Stephens from her post in January 2006.
Mrs Stephens was then awarded the maximum payment of six months’ salary, which amounted to £27,470.
Neither party will reveal the level of the latest payment and both said it was confidential.
‘I view the settlement as the long-awaited apology that was due to me,’ she said.
The department would not say yesterday where the money would come from. A spokesman said it was legally obliged not to comment
further.
The dismissal effectively put Mrs Stephens into retirement four years early as she said she was told that she would never get another job with Education.
Mrs Stephens said she had received a letter from Education minister Martin Ozanne confirming the settlement - two years to the day after she received one signed by him saying she had been sacked.
Deputy Education minister Wendy Morgan said she was pleased the matter had
been concluded.
‘We are just very relieved that the whole thing can be put behind us as it has gone on for a very long time,’ she said.
Deputy Brian de Jersey, who spoke up for Mrs Stephens at the tribunal, was also glad the matter was finished.
‘I was just pleased that I was able to support a Vale parishioner who was unfairly dismissed,’ he said.
‘I’m not proud of what it has all cost, but sometimes that needs to happen for the right thing to be done.’
Mrs Stephens said her experience in dealing with the department and others in the political arena had caused her to give careful consideration to offering herself as a candidate for St Sampson’s in the April election.
‘I expect to finalise that decision very soon,’ she said.
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