HR Investigations in Schools: Disciplinary, Grievance and Capability

A practical guide for headteachers, principals, proprietors, governors and trustees

Most school employment cases that come apart don’t come apart on the facts. They come apart on process, and usually on something decided in the first week by somebody trying to be helpful.

The investigating officer was also the person who’d decide. The suspension was automatic. The allegations were never put in writing. The investigation drifted into new territory nobody had defined.

It’s understandable that these decisions get made quickly. A school leader dealing with a conduct matter is usually dealing with six other things, and the process feels like the least urgent part. Many leaders tell us they only realised how much the first week mattered when somebody asked them about it a year later.

This isn’t legal advice and your HR and legal advisers should be involved throughout. In this guide we’ll cover the three processes schools most often blur, the framework that governs them, and the errors we see repeatedly. The wider picture is in our guide to school investigations.

What Is the Difference Between Disciplinary, Grievance and Capability?

They aren’t interchangeable and the choice at the start determines everything that follows.

Disciplinary deals with conduct. Something a person did or failed to do that they could have done differently. Lateness, breach of the code of conduct, dishonesty, misuse of systems.

Grievance deals with a complaint raised by an employee about their own employment. Treatment by a colleague or manager, working conditions, bullying, or a decision they consider unfair.

Capability deals with performance or ill health. The person is trying and can’t currently meet the standard.

The most common error is running a capability issue as a disciplinary matter because the manager is frustrated, or running a disciplinary matter as capability because it feels kinder. Both produce an unfair process and both are visible immediately to a tribunal.

A single situation can contain more than one. A grievance may be raised in response to disciplinary proceedings, which is common and isn’t in itself a reason to doubt it. Take advice on whether to run them in sequence or in parallel.

What Does the ACAS Code Require?

The ACAS Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures sets the baseline for a fair process, and an unreasonable failure to follow it can lead to an uplift in compensation at tribunal.

The principles are straightforward. Deal with matters promptly. Act consistently. Carry out a reasonable investigation to establish the facts. Inform the employee of the problem in writing and give them the evidence. Hold a meeting to discuss it. Allow the employee to be accompanied. Decide on appropriate action. Provide the right of appeal.

Your own policy may go further, and where it does you must follow your own policy as well. In maintained schools and academies that policy is frequently a local authority or trust model, and departing from it because it seems cumbersome is a common and expensive mistake.

Teachers in maintained schools also have specific procedural protections, so check what applies to the individual rather than assuming a single process covers everyone in the building.

Who Should Investigate a Disciplinary Matter in a School?

Somebody who won’t decide the outcome and won’t hear any appeal. Keeping those roles separate is the thing that most often fails and the thing that’s hardest to fix afterwards.

In a large school that’s straightforward. In a small independent special school or an alternative provision with four senior staff, it frequently isn’t, and that’s a legitimate reason to look outside.

Where the matter concerns the headteacher, the investigating role sits with the chair of governors, the chair of trustees or the proprietor, and this is one of the clearest cases for an independent investigation.

Whoever investigates should establish facts, not decide what should happen to somebody. We cover that distinction in how to write a school investigation report.

How Should a School Run an HR Investigation?

Define the allegations in writing before you start. Specific, dated where possible, and framed as what’s alleged rather than what’s concluded.

Set terms of reference, even briefly. What’s being investigated, what isn’t, who may be spoken to, and by when.

Gather the documents first, then interview. Give notice, share the evidence you’ll put to people, and offer the right to be accompanied where it applies. We cover the detail in how to conduct investigation interviews in schools.

Keep to your timescales or explain why you can’t. Investigations that drift do real harm, particularly where somebody is suspended, and delay is one of the things tribunals look at.

Then produce a report that answers the allegations on the evidence and stops there.

Where Do HR Investigations and Safeguarding Intersect?

More often than schools expect, and getting this wrong is the most serious error in this article.

Where an allegation meets the harm threshold, meaning a person may have harmed a child, may have committed a criminal offence against a child, or may pose a risk to children, the local authority designated officer is involved. That happens before and alongside any internal HR process, not instead of it and not after it.

Take the LADO’s advice on sequencing. Where police or children’s social care are investigating, the school’s process may need to pause, and running an internal investigation in parallel can compromise a criminal case.

Referral duties to the Teaching Regulation Agency or the Disclosure and Barring Service may apply, and a resignation doesn’t remove them. Take advice specifically on this rather than assuming a departure closes the matter.

Where the concern involves a senior leader, the reporting route changes and needs settling before anything else happens. We cover that in when safeguarding concerns involve a senior leader.

When Should a School Suspend Someone During an Investigation?

Not automatically, and not because it feels safer.

Statutory guidance is clear that suspension shouldn’t be an automatic response to an allegation. Consider the alternatives first, record which you considered and why each was or wasn’t sufficient, and review the decision at intervals.

The decision sits with the headteacher or, where the matter concerns them, the chair or proprietor. It shouldn’t be taken by the person investigating.

We cover this fully in suspending a member of staff during an investigation.

What Are the Most Common Errors in School HR Investigations?

Seven, in rough order of how often we see them.

Roles not separated, so the investigator also decides. Allegations never put in writing, so the employee is responding to a moving target. Evidence not shared before the hearing. Suspension applied automatically. The scope drifting as new matters emerge. Delay, particularly where somebody is suspended. And the school’s own policy not followed because it seemed cumbersome.

Every one of those is procedural, avoidable, and fatal to an otherwise sound case.

From Our Experience

The cases that come apart are rarely the ones where the school was wrong about what happened. They’re the ones where the school was right and couldn’t act on it.

We often find a situation where everybody knew what had occurred, the evidence was there, and the process had been handled by one person wearing three hats because the school is small and there was nobody else. That’s an understandable position and it’s not a defensible one.

Many leaders tell us the thing they’d change was the first week. A conversation in a corridor, a view expressed to staff, a decision to suspend taken in twenty minutes. None of it malicious, all of it visible later.

Schools that handle these well slow down for an hour at the start, take advice before acting, and write down what they decided and why. That hour is worth more than anything that follows it.

A Common Misconception

“It is a small school, so we can keep it informal.”

It’s an entirely understandable instinct. In a setting with twelve staff who know each other well, a formal process feels disproportionate and slightly cold.

But informality is what fails. An employee who was never told the allegations in writing, never given the evidence, and never offered the right to be accompanied has grounds regardless of what they did. The smaller the school, the more likely it is that one person has occupied several roles, which is the other thing tribunals look for.

Size is a reason to look outside for the roles you can’t fill internally, not a reason to abandon the framework.

And there’s a point that matters more than the employment risk. Where a conduct matter touches on how an adult behaved towards a child, a process that collapses means nothing can be acted on. The pupil at the centre of it is the person who loses when the paperwork was informal.

Questions for Leaders and Governors

• Have we decided which process this is, and could it be more than one?
• Is the investigating officer genuinely separate from the decision maker and the appeal?
• Have the allegations been put in writing and the evidence shared?
• Should the LADO be involved before we run an internal process?
• Are we following our own policy, including any local authority or trust model?

Our Perspective

HR processes in schools are uncomfortable and they’re a normal part of running any organisation with people in it.

Choose the right process at the start. Separate the roles, and go outside where a small staff makes that impossible. Put things in writing. Share the evidence. Check the safeguarding intersection before anything else. Keep to your timescales and follow your own policy.

Handled properly, these processes protect everybody: the person under investigation, who gets a fair hearing, the colleagues around them, and the children, who are entitled to a school where something that needs addressing can actually be addressed.