A lab assistant sacked from a Catholic girls’ school has lost her unfair dismissal case after she was filmed slapping a schoolgirl’s hand during a rowdy science class.
Jillian McLoghlin was fired by St Columba’s College in Essendon after the school principal reviewed a video filmed by another student, which showed the veteran technician striking the teenager in front of classmates.
The footage was captured during a Year 9 biology lesson that involved students dissecting a bull’s eye in August last year.
Video captured an audible ‘smack’ as Ms McLoghlin slapped the 15-year-old girl’s hand, prompting the student to recoil in shock and exclaim, ‘Oh my God!’
Ms McLoghlin maintained the slap was a reflex action to prevent the student from injuring herself on a scalpel she was packing away with a dissection board, scissors, and forceps.
She argued her dismissal was unfair and the College had relied unfairly on a video of the incident taken without her permission.
Ms McLoghlin admitted she was ‘cross’ from the misbehaving students who were flicking pieces of a bull’s eye at each other during a dissection lesson and that she had told them to stop.
But Fair Work Commission deputy president Alan Colman upheld the technician’s dismissal, describing the slap as ‘forceful’, ‘entirely unwarranted’, and ‘difficult to imagine being appropriate in this day and age’.
Mr Colman found that the technician did not slap the student with the intention of protecting her.
‘It does not make sense that slapping the student’s hand would prevent her from cutting herself on a scalpel,’ he said.
‘There is nothing in the video that is suggestive of there being any safety risk to the student, other than Ms McLoghlin’s slap.
‘Further, the notion that Ms McLoghlin was trying to protect (the student) is inconsistent with Ms McLoghlin’s statement that, if she had been trained on dealing with unruly behaviour, she would have been able to walk away from the situation.
Mr Colman said the slap was ‘entirely unwarranted’.
‘In this day and age, it is difficult to imagine situations in which it would be appropriate for a teacher or a school assistant to slap the hand of a student, but if there are any such situations, this was not one of them.’
Mr Colman also found there was no reason why the College should not have made use of the video recording in its investigation of Ms McLoghlin’s conduct.
‘The school’s policy that governs electronic devices in class applies to students,’ he said.
‘It does not prevent the College’s use of video recordings for disciplinary purposes.’
He said it was evident Ms McLoghlin had not accepted full responsibility for her conduct or the seriousness of her behaviour.
‘She seeks to ascribe some of the blame for her conduct to a lack of training from the College on how to deal with unruly students,’ Mr Colman said.
‘But one does not need such training to know that it is impermissible to slap a student.’
St Columba’s College principal Rita Grima gave evidence that the College has in place a policy which specifically prohibits staff from using physical means or corporal punishment to discipline or control students.
She said that Ms McLoghlin had been trained on the Code as recently as February 2024 and, as an employee of the College, she was required to comply with it.
Last month, the Commission awarded maximum compensation of $55,000 to a teacher sacked for yelling at students.