'If you are suspended, you are tipsy game'
If you hang your dirty laundry outside over your own school, you run the risk of being dismissed. Or worse. But who actually determines how far you can go? And what happens when you cross the border?
Picture: Nina Maissouradze
How uncomfortable, on a wooden chair in the hallway at the top of the stairs of the stately cantonal court in Nijmegen, hands folded in his lap, the teacher waited for her counsel. Every now and then her gaze slid to the side. Ten meters away, in the waiting room, the leadership of Roc Nijmegen had settled down with a four-man delegation - education director, personnel director, chairman of the board and a lawyer - rolled up shirt sleeves and jackets hung over the backrests.
Paula van Manen, teacher and member of the works council, had been suspended from home for more than eight months at that time. The teacher had published an anonymous book on the introduction of personalized education in her own pedagogical training. A personal story about the impact on teachers and students, who were struggling with the radical educational reform. Her message was clear: she stood for what she wrote and she really wanted to get back to work. In her team or, if necessary, at another place within the organization. Her functioning as a teacher was not in question. That Tuesday morning in the last warm week of the summer vacation, she finally got the chance to defend herself against her impending dismissal in court.
Picture: Nina Maissouradze
The board kept its foot firmly against the door during the session. Some employees were recognized behind the pseudonyms in the book, felt their trust was violated. It was not about the criticism in itself, according to the roc management, but about the way in which it should have been discussed internally. The fact that during the futile mediation process Van Manen continued to oppose her suspensions from the national appeals committee and later made a militant statement on her website, was not well received. There would be no suitable place anywhere within the institution - according to the annual report, a school with a thousand employees, three directorates of education and dozens of training teams. “I absolutely and sincerely see no way back,” stated Chairman of the Board Peter van Mulkom. The judge frowned at both parties. “I don't think it makes sense to put you together again,” he said.
It turned out to be a prelude to the ruling that followed at the beginning of September. Of the three grounds put forward by the roc board for dismissal, the judge found only the 'disrupted employment relationship' to be serious enough. He gave the employer permission to terminate Van Manen's employment contract with effect from 1 October.
Hinder
Nest pollution. Anyone who publicly criticizes their own school, institution or organization will soon be accused of that kind of thing. Hang the dirty laundry outside, you don't do that, do you? But why not? How far can you go? Who sets the boundary? And what happens when you cross that line?
The line is drawn by the employer, initially. Ton van Haperen, economics teacher in secondary education and teacher trainer, Education magazine columnist and publicist, knows better than anyone how this works. For twenty years now he has been approached – from time to time – about the content of his critical columns, articles and books. “I don't find that a problem at all. If you write, you must also be able to account for it. The other side also has the right to say what it thinks. Such a conversation often starts with: Ton, I don't want to hinder you in your writing, but... Then you know that you are approaching a limit.”
Such a conversation often starts with: Ton, I don't want to hinder you in your writing, but... Then you know that you are approaching a limit
You have to ensure that you remain rational and do not get into the emotion, says Van Haperen. "From both sides. I don't want to make a whine story out of it, we always got it right. For me it has never come to the point where you are put on hold and then the tent is worked out. That's also because my drivers have chosen not to. I think that the costs of such a procedure, even the negative publicity, are much greater for the school than the proceeds. ”
One manager is not the other, situations are never completely comparable. But there is a common denominator: school administrators try to keep a grip on the image of the organization in order to prevent or combat unsightly images. Competition between schools - a consequence of pupil and student funding - also plays a role in this, responds AObdriver Tamar van Gelder. "If you get negative in the news, you might miss registrations and thus earn income."
If you are in the news negatively, you may miss registrations and therefore income
An employer naturally has to take all kinds of interests into account. In addition to those of an individual employee, he also weighs the interests of a team as a whole, the continuity of education. "The name of the school can be of real importance," said Loe Sprengers, chairman of the appeals committees for basic education, MBO and HBO. He is also an education lawyer with his own office. "You can see that schools have started to attach more value to good publicity and image building."
Escalation
Picture: Nina Maissouradze
Deactivating an employee is a major step. How often that happens is a guess. At the appeals committee for basic education, for example, last year 30 of the 61 cases concerned a suspension. But those are just the issues that end up on the board of the committee because the teacher has appealed the decision. Issues that revolve around a teacher who has been dismissed from the school with a publication, are rarely presented to the committee.
From one day to the next you are at home, cut off from your colleagues and work environment. “That makes a lot of sense,” Sprengers agrees. Most suspensions are imposed as a temporary measure. “A suspension as an order measure can be functional to create the space needed to find out what is going on. But such a suspension must be substantiated with the correct grounds and must not last longer than is necessary. In the cases that we see, this is sometimes lacking. When the teacher is away from his workplace, the problem seems to be solved for a while. You can see that the interests of the suspended employee are not always dealt with adequately in all cases. ”
When the teacher is removed from his workplace, the problem seems to be solved for a while. You can see that the interests of the suspended employee are not dealt with equally adequately in all cases
You can contest the measure, but the appeals committee does a marginal review of a suspension: has the procedure been followed correctly? Moreover, such an appeal takes time and in practice there is often only a decision when the next suspension has already started, unless you request a temporary provision. And although the order measure is intended to bring peace, it often also promotes escalation and removal.
“You get an atmosphere in which people think: There will really be something going on there, otherwise you won't be suspended. Even if there is no evidence for this at all, ”responds education lawyer Wouter Pors, who assists Paula van Manen, among others. "The teacher who is suspended at home is tipsy game." Especially if the suspension drags on for months and months and an employer himself increasingly becomes a party to the conflict. “The longer you are away from your workplace, the more difficult it becomes to return,” he said AObdirector Van Gelder. "Often you are already standing with one leg outside."
Loyalty
In reality, that process of a time-out alone often contributes to a disrupted employment relationship, a reason for employers to be able to dismiss the teacher before the subdistrict court. “It takes some courage, but a judge does not have to be satisfied with that,” says Pors. In higher professional education, the lawyer once assisted a teacher who was in danger of being fired on this ground. “The judge said to the employer: That is largely your fault, you have to let the employee go back to work. Then you still get a difficult situation. In this case, the employer continued to seek conflict. And then the employee himself requested termination of the contract, we faced the same judge again and the teacher was awarded a high compensation. ”
It is not the case that there would be some kind of general obligation of secrecy for teachers
In the Van Manen case, the Subdistrict Court decided otherwise. Although he does not call it a reason for dismissal in itself, he also blames the lecturer for having acted in violation of the 'discretion and loyalty' that should be expected of her in the context of 'good employment practices' through her publication. “I find that remarkable,” says Pors. “It is not the case that there is some kind of general confidentiality obligation for teachers. This is indeed about freedom of speech. You can expect people to become even more reluctant to express criticism. ”
“A manager at a previous workplace sometimes said: Well, Laurensz, let's see what nonsense you have written down”, says Education Magazine columnist and Dutch teacher Laurensz Rötgers. “He handled it lightly. But I always consider whether I am writing something down or not. It has also happened that I had experienced a very telling story, of which I knew beforehand: if I write that down, I will have problems with it. And then I didn't use it. ” Since last summer, Rötgers has a new job, at Roc Nijmegen. “I have indicated in advance that I write columns in the Education Magazine. That is just as neat if you are hired somewhere. ”
Discussion and debate are part of the mental climate within an educational institution, Sprengers argues. “If you want to educate and prepare students for their role in our society, you expose them to different opinions and beliefs. As far as I am concerned, as an institution you should not deal with that too much. ”
This story appeared in the October issue of the Onderwijsblad. Also read the interview with Van Manen in December 2019 appeared and the newsitem over the pronounciation of the Subdistrict Court.
