A LANCASTER teacher has been awarded £47,000 compensation after an employment tribunal decided she had been made redundant because she was deemed to be too old.

Barbara Staff, 54, was made redundant from her job at Ridge Primary School in August last year when the school shed staff in order to save money.

Governors decided to operate a "first in, first out" policy but the tribunal in Manchester decided this was "quite unfair".

It said the governors had produced no evidence that the school would benefit from having younger teachers and did not apply their cost saving argument consistently.

Making the longest-serving staff redundant first "discriminated specifically against employees who had provided greater loyalty and length of service", the tribunal said in its written decision.

Shortly before Mrs Staff, then aged 53, was due to leave, the school got some more money, enough to enable it to hire another teacher for four days a week and a new, younger one was appointed on "precisely the same salary scale", the tribunal said.

Governors claimed that she had turned down an offer of part-time work and could have applied for the post, but chose not to.

But the tribunal agreed with her when she said she did not know she was going to be considered for redundancy at the time or that part-time meant as many as four days a week.

Mrs Staff said: "I was chosen because of my long service but shortly after my imposed redundancy, a new teacher was appointed on the same salary scale as I had been on.

"It was a very low spot. I am not a combative person but it is necessary to fight injustice.

"It is important that teachers with many years of service are retained in our profession, not simply be viewed as disposable.

"I feel that the judgment of the tribunal gives a very clear message to both employers and employees that employment rights exist to prevent injustice and that we must all be aware of them, fight for them and use them where we can."

A county council spokesman said: "Ridge Primary had been facing a reduction in the number of pupils attending the school and was placed in a position where they were forced to make a reduction in staffing levels. The school felt that it was in the wider interest of the pupils to have more of a mix of ages among its teachers and so adopted a policy on redundancy which included a measure of length of service as a small part of the decision making process. However, we settled Mrs Staff's claim for compensation after the Tribunal ruled this secondary criteria was inappropriate."