Teacher was paid £80,000 for two years after she quit

SCOTLAND’s largest council has been criticised after it emerged it continued to pay a teacher for more than two years after she left one of its schools.

Bernadine Hunter avoided being struck off by the General Teaching Council for Scotland yesterday after it heard she had received salary payments totalling more than £80,000 from Glasgow City Council, despite no longer working for the local authority.

The primary school teacher had left her post to take up another at Coalburn Primary School in South Lanarkshire in September 2006, but continued to receive a salary from Glasgow until early in 2009.

The GTCS’s disciplinary sub-committee yesterday decided not to take action against the teacher after hearing she had started to pay the money back and had been under the “excessive influence” of her husband, who controlled the couple’s finances.

But in its ruling, the sub-committee said it found it “difficult to understand” how Glasgow City Council had continued to make the payments.

While Mrs Hunter received payments totalling £82,635, the total net cost of these to Glasgow City Council was £99,907.

In its ruling, the GTCS said: “The sub-committee found the fact that Glasgow City Council had continued to make these payments to the respondent [Mrs Hunter] for a period of two and a half years after the end of her employment difficult to understand and considered that, while not removing any responsibility of the respondent to take appropriate action, the circumstances might not have arisen and any sums involved might have been considerably less had this not happened.”

The GTCS, which described the case as “particularly unusual”, heard the teacher had been unaware of the payments until July 2007.

While noting that she should have then resolved the situation, it said she had “no control over her financial affairs”, with her husband opening and dealing with all mail, meaning she had been unaware of payslips being sent to her.

It said Mrs Hunter’s “vulnerability due to the duress of her personal circumstances was a powerful mitigating factor which had to be balanced against the charges”.

It added: “The sub-committee was in no doubt that the circumstances giving rise to the charges would normally result in removal of the respondent’s name from the [teaching] register. However, the compelling nature of the mitigating factors was sufficient to allow the sub-committee to conclude that another option would be appropriate in this particular case.”

Yesterday’s hearing was told the teacher had repaid a “substantial proportion” of the money and was continuing to do so.

The GTCS accepted Mrs Hunter had not personally benefited from the money “which appeared to have been retained by her husband”. It decided not to take any action against the teacher.

A spokesman for Glasgow City Council said: “The woman concerned had no authority to accept the payments and should have alerted the council immediately to the situation.

“Improved procedures have been put in place and steps have been taken to recover the money.”