EducationGovernors' disciplinary panel gearing complaint against teacher - chief education officer required to leave prior to deliberations - not unreasonableR (McNally) v Secretary of State for Education and Employment and Another: CA (Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers MR, Lords Justices Kennedy and Dyson): 12 March 2001A teacher was accused of inappropriate behaviour towards a pupil and suspended from the school.

A disciplinary panel of governors, having heard evidence from the local education authority against the teacher and evidence in his defence, complied with the authority's procedural handbook and asked everyone to leave so they could deliberate in private.

There was an issue as to whether the chief education officer's representative queried that request, but he also left.

The panel concluded that no misconduct had occurred and recommended that the suspension be lifted.

The education authority requested that the secretary of state intervene.

The secretary of state directed the disciplinary panel to rehear the allegations since the panel had acted unreasonably in excluding the chief education officer from their deliberations.

The teacher's application for judicial review was refused.

He appealed.Nicholas Blake QC and Amanda Weston (instructed by Thompsons, Manchester) for the teacher.

Eleanor Grey (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) for the secretary of state.

Timothy Straker QC (instructed by Council Solicitor, Bury Metropolitan Borough Council, Bury) for the authority.Held, allowing the appeal, that the chief education officer was entitled by paragraph 8(9) of schedule 3 to the Education Reform Act 1988 to attend all governors' meetings concerning a teacher's dismissal; that that power should only be exercised in accordance with natural justice; that it was inappropriate for a chief education officer of an authority seeking the teacher's dismissal to attend the deliberations evaluating the evidence; and that, accordingly, it had not been unreasonable within sections 496 or 497 of the 1988 Act for the panel to deliberate in private.