Interesting:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Examiner+fails+in+Edexcel+unfair+dismissal+tribunal.-a097290494Examiner fails in Edexcel unfair dismissal tribunal.
An examiner who claimed that he lost his job with an examination board after criticising his employers attitude to marking yesterday failed in his attempt to bring an action for unfair dismissal.
An employment tribunal sitting in Norwich ruled that retired headmaster John Mead, aged 66, of Cromer, Norfolk, was not legally an employee of the examination board Edexcel and therefore not entitled to launch an unfair dismissal case. Edexcel severed links with Mr Mead in June 2002 barely two weeks after he had complained that he was being asked to mark down GCSE history candidates.
Mr Mead, a history paper examiner since 1988, said he had been told that if too many candidates were regraded on appeal it would reflect badly on Edexcel.
But his attempts to win compensation fell at the first legal hurdle after Edexcel argued that Mr Mead had never been 'an employee' in the legal sense of the term but had worked on a contract basis.
Tribunal chairman Christopher Ash praised the eloquence of Mr Mead, who represented himself at the hearing, but said his claim could not be considered for legal reasons. After the hearing Mr Mead said he would consider what other avenues of appeal were available before coming to any decision as to whether to pursue his claims against Edexcel.
Mr Mead had earlier said examiners' pay was so 'beggarly' that the board was forced to recruit student teachers to mark GCSE papers. He said he thought that examination board Edexcel was 'mad' to use unqualified staff to grade papers.
'Because of the beggarly pay they were forced to look outside the teaching profession for markers,' Mr Mead told the tribunal in Norwich.
'They recruited student teachers who were then trained to mark by examiners.
'These were graduates who were doing their post-graduate diploma.
'At the time we were training them they were not newly-qualified teachers.
'I thought they (Edexcel) were mad.'
