A head of department has returned from maternity leave in a part-time job share. She now wishes to give up the depart-mental responsibility. How do we deal with this?
In current employment law, as interpreted by tribunals, your governors probably had little choice about agreeing to the initial job share request. In doing so, however, they were committing themselves to this arrangement for the indefinite future.
The chances of both parties to the job share resigning at the same time are remote, so you are stuck with it. You have demonstrated that job sharing can work, even if it is not ideal. Redundancy for the remaining person when their job share partner leaves would therefore be dubious.
But you do not have to accede to the request to relinquish departmental responsibilities. This teacher is employed to do a job, albeit shared, as head of department. She can resign the whole job, or seek leave from the governors to amend her contract. They do not have to agree and can argue, reasonably enough, that with no vacancy created and no internal candidate available, they are unable to fill the half-share of departmental responsibility required.
Archimedes
