A head teacher did not ensure financial matters and employment and pupils’ special educational needs were managed correctly, a professional standards hearing has been told. Linda Frame, who was dismissed from Llangiwg Primary School in Neath Port Talbot, dishonestly paid staff running the wraparound care service cash in hand and didn’t ensure accurate accounts were kept or that cash was stored, banked, and recorded properly, it was alleged.

An Education Workforce Council (EWC) Wales fitness to practise committee also heard Frame did not ensure children with special educational needs were put forward for assessment, didn’t ensure employment checks on staff, and misled parents on progress of their special educational needs referrals. Frame, who was the school’s special educational needs co-ordinator as well as its head, worked an 80-hour week including 15 hours of teaching the hearing, held remotely on October 24, was told.

Asked by the EWC’s presenting officer Greg Foxsmith if she ha been “spinning too many plates” or had become forgetful Frame denied this. She said hers was not the only school who paid some staff cash in hand. Those running the wraparound childcare service at the school were paid cash but were told they had to contact HMRC themselves regarding tax while proper financial records were kept and cash kept in a locked money box, she said. Join our WhatsApp news community here to receive the latest breaking news updates.

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The wraparound provision which ran three times a week for 15 children took approximately £225 a week, the hearing was told. Because it was often “money in, money out” for staff pay, fruit, and stocks of things like paint it was hardly worth banking every day, Frame told the hearing.

Mr Foxsmith said he wasn’t suggesting the head teacher was “dipping her hand in” the money box for wraparound “but there were really no accurate accounts”. Frame denied this. She told the hearing she had been told she could not put the wraparound accounts and money through the main school budget and the provision was not registered because she was told it did not have to be.

On matters regarding children with special educational needs Frame told the hearing she felt she had been secretly monitored by the local education authority’s educational psychologist Naomi Erasmus rather than concerns being raised with her if they arose. Mr Foxsmith told the hearing Frame had “an exemplary career”. But he suggested to her she fell below standards expected “because you are having to spin so many plates and worked so hard that in respect of these allegations – this is the reason you fell below the high standards you would normally achieve”.

Frame denied this and she said she had not failed to manage documents for children with special educational needs. “I did not mislead parents and there were no parental complaints,” she said as she strongly denied dishonesty.

NASUWT officer Colin Adkins, representing Frame, pointed out that Neath Port Talbot Council had allowed the unregistered wraparound service at the school to continue running for six weeks after she was suspended and queried whether they would do that if they thought it was illegal to do so. Ms Frame faces nine allegations, all of which she denies. The hearing continues.