Justification

Case 4: The facts

Following her return from maternity leave Ms Sibley asked to work part time but was turned down because the school believed that her job could only be undertaken full time. A tribunal rejected Sibley's claim that she had been discriminated against. She appealed to the EAT.

The ruling

The EAT rejected her claim. It held that the requirement that a form tutor should be full time was objectively justified. The EAT differentiated the case from an earlier case (Whiffen v Governing Body of Milham Ford Girls' School) where a redundancy policy which automatically selected workers on fixed-term contracts (who were predominantly female) was held to be unfair. In Sibley's case the EAT pointed out that the policy did not act as a total bar to employment but only as a block on certain jobs.

* Sibley v The Girls' Public Day School EAT/1368/01