Supreme Court extends employment rights to Government-employed teachers working abroad

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) employs teachers to work in European schools on fixed-term contracts. Those contracts can be extended so teachers spend nine years working at the schools, or 10 years in exceptional circumstances.

Mr Duncome was employed by the UK Government to work in European Schools in Germany, according to the Supreme Court ruling.

Duncome won a Court of Appeal ruling for unfair dismissal against the DCSF when his contract was ended after he had served more than ten years at a school in Karlsruhe.

DCSF appealed that decision to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court has ruled that Duncome and Mr Fletcher who worked at a European School in England on a Government contract were entitled to protection from unfair dismissal under UK employment law. The Employment Rights Act gives workers the right not be unfairly dismissed by their employers.

A law that restricted the right to UK-based workers only was repealed in 1999.

The Court said it considered that the UK Government was a British employer and that the contracts under which the teachers were employed were governed by English law.

The fact the teachers were employed in an "international enclave" governed by international agreements meant they had no particular connection to the country in which they were situated, the Court said. The teachers did not pay local taxes.

Exceptional circumstances outlining when other categories of workers could claim the rights to not being unfairly dismissed under UK law have been established and should apply to the teachers employed by the UK Government in European schools, the Supreme Court said.

"These cases do form another example of an exceptional case where the employment has such an overwhelmingly closer connection with Britain and with British employment law than with any other system of law that it is right to conclude that Parliament must have intended that the employees should enjoy protection from unfair dismissal," the Supreme Court said in its ruling.

The Court said teachers working for European schools in England received protection from unfair dismissal and that therefore it would be "anomalous" if that right did not extend to teachers doing the same role abroad.