Story 146

I was forced into signing an NDA, by a head teacher in a secondary school. I’d joined as a head of department and was bullied for several years by the previous head of department, their relative, and another member of staff who went for the job I got. The bullying included racial harassment, sexism, and gender discrimination.

The head teacher was close friends with this group and would brush off repeated complaints. After many years, I wrote up everything that had happened which made the severity of the situation irrefutable: dates. Witnesses, emails, texts, and was suddenly confronted with performance conversations.

I escalated the situation to the regional director of my union who supported and responded appropriately. They labelled what they saw as discrimination, backed up with numerous other evidence that the school couldn’t justify.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a character smearing campaign began. I was pulled into HR. . I started to feel very vulnerable and isolated. As the school stepped things up, my union rep said he had some informal conversations within the county council with people that had connections to the head teacher and became alarmed to see that character assassination was occuring, which could cause reputational harm in other local schools. They said they’d support me with exiting the situation should it be affecting my mental health - which it was by this point.

I became alarmed one weekend, when I went into my school work inbox to see that hundreds of my emails from the past 4-5 years had disappeared. This was the evidence I had to support my case. I then looked in my delete folder, and there they all were, sitting there! I told my union they said they’d seen this before and to forward all of them to a personal account immediately, and take photographic evidence that they had been deleted.

My union stepped up visibility with the school and began discussing exit negotiations. To my union, the school said they were on the cusp of sacking me (their language), however without a reason given and “withheld evidence”. They said that I needed to sign an NDA with a settlement figure otherwise they would take out an SOSR (“some other significant reason) to get rid of me. This reason being my inability to form relationships with the staff I recorded as bullying me with evidence . We had a meeting the next day and I was told to accept the offer and leave the school premises that day. Or I’d be fired with nothing.

My union pressed for the reason and evidence they had, and there was literally nothing other than “relationships”.

I was close to a breakdown by this point, and was ready to exit, but did not want to leave that day. The union stated if I left mid term, then it would damage my chances of re-employment as it would forever look on a cv like I had been sacked, when I had done nothing remotely wrong. In fact I was a model employee: no absence days, got the best results in the team, worked hard and went above and beyond as someone highly competent and hard working.

The school backed down and allowed my leaving date to be at the end of Easter - in accordance with national resignation periods, but I was placed on gardening leave and not allowed on site for about 4 weeks.

The payout I received was the maximum amount I would have received if I took constructive dismissal and won my case in a tribunal for discrimination.

The situation nearly broke me.

I couldn’t work for 5 months, was unable to leave the house for much of this time.

It took a full year to recover, and probably around £2000 in therapy bills.

I’ve recovered now; but it’s made me very weary about where I’ll work in future, who I can trust in the workplace, and genuinely concerned about equality laws and how easily they are disregarded by some employers who prefer silencing victims rather than confront the toxic cultures in their organisation.