Recommendation accepted: Heads of Schools and others to be given reasons for re-deployment

Recommendation accepted: Heads of Schools and others to be given reasons for re-deployment

Published October 28, 2026

Following a report submitted first to the Ministry responsible for education and later to the Office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry responsible for education has accepted the recommendation, made by the Commissioner for Education in a Final Report of 18 September 2026, “that when Heads of School and all other employees in the education sector are re-deployed (other than at their specific request) they should be immediately given the true reason for that re-deployment (transfer), without subterfuge or prevarication”.

The complaint

The complaint was filed with the Ombudsman’s Office on 22 June 2026 and was assigned to the Commissioner for Education. The complainant – a Head of School – had served as such for 19 years, with the last four (from September 1922) as head of a post-secondary school.

On 17 June 2026 she was summoned to the office of one of the two Directors General responsible for staff redeployment and informed, without any explanation or reason given, that for the coming scholastic year she was going to serve as Head of School at a Middle School. Apart from perfunctory emails sent to her containing vague generalisations, the complainant was not given cogent reasons for her transfer. She complained that, apart from her transfer amounting to a demotion, the lack of cogent reasons justifying her transfer was unfair, unjust and vindictive.

Facts and Findings

After a thorough examination of all the correspondence, facts and circumstances, the Commissioner for Education noted in his Final Report that the lack of proper reasons given to the complainant for her transfer was highlighted by the sharp difference in those reasons subsequently sent to the Ombudsman’s Office and to the complainant herself by the two Directors General abovementioned. One Director General praised the complainant for her leadership skills, which were now required at the Middle School; the other Director General, chose to refer to the “several complaints” against her that the Education Division had received.

When the Commissioner examined the four substantive “complaints” levelled against the complainant’s management style these were all found to be issues where the complainant had taken a firm stand either with recalcitrant teachers or with uncooperative parents in the interests of the school, of its students in general and, in one instance, of one student in particular.

Conclusions and recommendations

The Commissioner for Education concluded that while it was true that the Education Division and its various departments were vested with a degree of “managerial prerogatives” in the exigencies of the service within the education sector, it was also undeniable that such prerogatives, with the concomitant discretion, must be exercised in compliance with the general framework of the law. Such prerogatives and discretion must be exercised with due regard to human dignity, and in such a way as to make those exercising such prerogatives and discretion duly accountable at law. In this case the complainant was not given the true reasons for her transfer at the meeting of 17 June 2026. When reasons were later forthcoming, they were confectioned in such a way as to suggest that she was somehow at fault and that her transfer to the Middle School was linked to the complaints made against her.

The Commissioner for Education, while dismissing the complaint in so far as it alleged a demotion, allowed the remainder of the complaint, that is on the basis that the true reasons should have been given to her immediately upon notification of her re-deployment elsewhere.

Outcome

By letter of 23 October 2026, the Office of the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry responsible for education informed the Ombudsman’s Office that “the Ministry will ensure greater clarity, consistency and timeliness in communicating the true reasons underpinning future redeployment decisions at the time of notification of such decisions”.