WE have appointed a new head of department to start later this year. A month after we received her formal acceptance of the post, she wrote to say that, as her boyfriend had found work in another part of the country, she now wished to turn down our job to join him. Should we have insisted that she honoured her obligations?
There is no doubt who is in the right here - you are, but I fear that it will not do you much good. There is no way you could have forced her to turn up if she refused to do so.
This teacher entered into a contract to work at your school and should not have ended it without giving the prescribed notice. By dropping out, she was liable to civil action for that breach and to pay any damages that the court might award.
That, however, is far from straightforward. It might be difficult to make a realistic calculation of what the breach of contract actually cost the school. The figure might be quite small, compared with the legal costs. A possible, and certainly cheaper, approach might be to claim the costs of re-advertising the post from her through the small claims court.
In reality, I suspect, you are far too busy running a school to give the time and energy to pursuing this irresponsible individual. What one would like to see is for such matters to be addressed by the General Teaching Council. Sanctions from the GTC would be a much more potent restraint on the small but significant number of teachers who treat their contractual obligations casually.
