Headteacher spent money without approval including £38,000 for WIFI

A self-styled 'superstar headteacher' was sacked after splashing out tens of thousands of pounds 'like it was going out of fashion', an employment tribunal heard.

High profile Paul Mundy-Castle - who has appeared on Good Morning Britain and earned £100,00-a-year - defied orders to stick to a £25,000 spending cap, telling concerned governors 'trust me'.

Without approval, the award-winning head signed off on £38,000 for Wifi equipment, £53,000 on desks, and £48,000 on a new canteen for Woodcote High School in Croydon.

Mr Mundy-Castle blamed race discrimination following the firing saying his white colleagues would not have been treated in the same way - but his case was dismissed.

The former Great Britain basketball international, who was also London’s Teacher of the Year in 2005, had not provided 'scared' governors at Woodcote High School in Croydon with a cash flow forecast, the tribunal was told.

They then learned Mr Mundy-Castle had already committed to the deals without their approval and even hired a company part-owned by his step-brother.

Mr Mundy-Castle, who has been in teaching for over 20 years and is a keynote speaker, was sacked for 'serious financial mismanagement'.

The 'well-respected' educator, who is black, sued the school for race discrimination, unfair dismissal, and victimisation among other claims.

At the South London hearing Mr Mundy-Castle claimed he is a 'superstar headteacher' but the tribunal said 'the picture is probably more complex'.

The hearing was told he joined the specialist sport, maths and computing academy in September 2019.

'[Mr Mundy-Castle] is a black man of African heritage. He has had a long career in education, and has worked his way up to becoming headteacher,' the tribunal heard.

'We accept his evidence that fewer than one per cent of headteachers in Britain are black. It was clear to us, from his career history and his presentation at the hearing before us that he is an intelligent, accomplished and charismatic man.'

It was heard after a bedding-in period that the first issue Mr Mundy-Castle sought to address was negotiating a pay-rise from the £104,741 salary he was given, a request that was denied.

Under the school's finance rules, payments over £25,000 by the headteacher had to be approved by the Board of Governors.

Soon after taking up his new job, Mr Mundy-Castle urged them to change the figure from £25,000 to £50,000 but his request was refused.

From October 2019, Mr Mundy-Castle signed leases with a company called Funding 4 Education Ltd for school equipment.

He entered into a three-year rental deal for canopies for the canteen, totalling a minimum of £47,927.

In January 2020, he signed another three-year deal with Funding 4 Education for the rental of Wifi equipment, totalling a minimum of £38,045.

Later he signed another three-year deal with the same company for desks, totalling a minimum of £52,923.

It was heard Mr Mundy-Castle did not seek authorisation from the governors before signing the deals, a direct violation of the spending cap.

Finance leases are also strictly regulated by the Education & Skills Funding Agency.

At a Board meeting in February 2020, concerns about cash flow were voiced by governors.

Mr Mundy-Castle told the Board that the Wifi cost £25,000 over three years and it was approved - without the Board realising that two weeks previously he had already committed to the deal and that it was in fact £38,000.

Later that month, governors received an anonymous tip-off about Mr Mundy-Castle's spending.

The whistle-blower said: 'The financial policies [sic] not been followed and money is being spent like it is going out of fashion.

'Links with companies that he has previously dealt with have come straight to Woodcote High School.

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'The governors are not being shown the correct budget for what is being spent, everything is going through a third-party company for financing and then being paid like a loan. Should this not be going through the governors?'

Around the same time, Mr Mundy-Castle proposed creating a 'small and precise management board' to act on behalf of trustees.

He claimed he was 'financially astute enough to manage the budget of one school considering in my previous role as Executive head at [a school trust], I managed the budget effectively for four secondary schools'.

Hiten Savla, a governor who worked as an accountant in the education sector for his full-time job, repeatedly asked Mr Mundy-Castle for a cash flow forecast to reassure the Board.

Mr Mundy-Castle claimed 'in three years time the school would have a surplus of at least £1 million if he controlled the teaching budget'.

He repeatedly failed to show a forecast and again repeated his request for an increase of the £25,000 limit.

After the Covid-19 pandemic, the Board held a meeting to discuss finances.

Mr Savla said: 'At the moment - money is going out with no clear guidance or authorisation structure; it seems whimsical - supportive of the vision but we need to see the picture of how it is happening otherwise it is hard to be supportive.

'There is great frustration - we are requesting information but nothing is coming through other than 'trust me'.

'Committees will not help if the 'trust me' approach continues. To carry the Board with him the Head must give information, otherwise it makes life difficult.'

He also said: 'If cash flow were not an issue I would be happy with what he is doing but I am concerned when I look at the numbers - it really scares me.

'We have the potential to run out of cash; this has not been the case in the past as we have been managing it but we are currently being asked to sign off on things with the risk of running out of cash...'

The canteen was eventually approved by the Board despite Mr Mundy-Castle already committing to it.

In the summer of 2020, the Board was concerned that the equipment the school was paying thousands of pounds for would not belong to them after the three year lease.

It also emerged Mr Mundy-Castle employed his step-brother's company to produce video material for the school.

He was suspended in November 2020 and sacked in July 2021 for gross misconduct after the school found he committed serious financial mismanagement.

At the tribunal, Mr Mundy-Castle brought claims of unfair and wrongful dismissal, race discrimination, victimisation, and claimed he was a whistle-blower.

He alleged his white colleagues would not have suffered a similar treatment and as one governor said in his grievance that the Head had 'gone with the race card straight away'.

Employment Judge Stephen Heath dismissed all claims.

Judge Heath said 'some of the evidence was strongly suggestive of Mr Mundy-Castle misleading the school'.

The judge concluded: '[Mr Mundy-Castle] was ultimately accountable for financial matters and he engaged in a course of conduct of repeatedly entering into agreements above the delegated limit and without appropriate approval.

'As a fact, this led to an [Education & Skills Funding Agency] sanction.

'This was against a backdrop of his repeated failure to provide essential financial information in the form of cash flow despite numerous requests and the importance of the information being stressed to him.

'When we look at the combination of this persistent lack of transparency coupled with actual financial impropriety, we find that dismissal was an appropriate sanction.'

Mr Mundy-Castle appeared on ITV's GMB in 2020 to discuss pupils returning to school during the pandemic.