Unfair dismissals and a “culture of fear”: there’s trouble at the City of Liverpool College

“It was the hardest thing I think I've ever been through in my entire life. I’ll never get over that they were trying to get rid of me.” I’m speaking to Stephanie Doyle, the former head of the City of Liverpool College's digital academy. Earlier this year, a tribunal brought to light the details of her dismissal from the institution in 2022, revealing how she was pressured into resigning from her role by bogus accusations of safeguarding failures.

She wasn’t alone. Another staff member, Kerry Dowd, had also been dismissed on that same day. Both teachers had raised concerns with management about the conduct of the principal, Elaine Bowker, after she had tried to push staff to give one of her relatives preferential treatment.

Staff had been told they were to treat Bowker’s relative, a student at the college, differently than his peers. According to staff members we spoke to, he was allowed his phone during lesson time, and would regularly text Bowker complaining that lessons were “boring”. Within minutes, someone from senior management would visit the classroom he was in, pulling the teacher in charge to one side and instructing them to make the lesson more enjoyable. Despite short staffing throughout the college, this pupil was granted one-to-one lesson time with his teachers; a course that had been cancelled due to undersubscription was reinstated specifically for him to attend — alone. At the beginning and end of the day, members of staff were instructed to escort him to and from reception, a privilege even the children with educational needs weren’t always granted.

Shortly after sounding the alarm about this unfair treatment, Stephanie and Kerry found themselves suspended. In phone calls to HR, they were told allegations of safeguarding failures had been levied against them. “As a woman, as a mother, as an educator, the thought of being grouped into a category of people that harm children — it makes you feel sick to your stomach,” Kerry tells me. “I can't get across the gravity and the impact that it has in using [the term safeguarding] against us”. While HR refused to expand on the details as to why they had been suspended, both women felt they had no choice but to resign. Any concerns about safeguarding are marked on your record as a teacher, and as Kerry is keen to stress — she knew this would have meant she would “never work [as a teacher] again”. 

But after a contract was presented to the women — asking them not to take the college to tribunal in return for an untarnished record and a good reference — both Stephanie and Kerry knew something wasn’t quite right. Instead, they decided to pursue a tribunal to find out the truth, and after three long years of delays, the judge presiding over their case ruled in their favour: they had been wrongfully dismissed, and there was no evidence of the alleged safeguarding failures the college claimed to have found.

In a damning report published last month, the judge noted that “[the college] never genuinely believed that there was a real risk of safeguarding failures, and only included this to threaten and frighten [Stephanie and Kerry]”. The report also highlighted how fearful some of the college’s witnesses were during the hearing — noting they were “unusually stressed” and would “visibly shake, perspire, and flush bright red” when asked to give evidence.

Since the outcome of Stephanie and Kerry’s tribunal, shockingly little has changed for the staff at the City of Liverpool College. Many believed that the college would issue an apology and principal Elaine Bowker would resign. Instead, there has been no acknowledgement to staff or students about the tribunal’s outcome, or the unfair preferential treatment given to Bowker’s relative. 

“It just feels like a complete lack of respect to the staff,” one current teacher tells me. “No one is stupid, everyone knows what is happening.” He says that the inaction from the college in recent weeks only “feeds into that narrative” that they are not willing to be held accountable for their actions, and that they will continue to penalise staff for attempting to make the college a better, fairer place. 

The Post has spent the last fortnight looking into the workplace culture at the City of Liverpool College. Through speaking to eight current and former staff members, and digging into the college’s finances over the last decade, we have uncovered a worrying pattern of abuses of power and previously unreported financial mismanagement. From investing public money into risky entrepreneurial schemes — including leasing a port for a boat for “maritime courses” that never properly materialised — to selling an important college building to a famous Liverpool developer for below market asking price, nearly all of these “ill thought-through” schemes, as teachers described them, sank shortly after they began.