Paul Mundy-Castle has lost his Employment Tribunal appeal over his 2021 dismissal from a secondary school in Coulsdon for ‘gross misconduct’. It is at least the third time that the former basketball player had made claims to the tribunal. EXCLUSIVE by STEVEN DOWNES
‘Superstar’: before his latest sacking, for gross misconduct, Paul Mundy-Castle was often interviewed on national television
The self-proclaimed “superstar head teacher” who was dismissed from his job at Woodcote High School in 2021 for gross misconduct, has lost his appeal against the decision of the Employment Tribunal.
An investigation by this website has discovered that Paul Mundy-Castle’s claims against the secondary school in Coulsdon, including that he was the victim of racial discrimination, are at least the third time that he has brought a case to the Employment Tribunal.
Mundy-Castle is a former Great Britain basketball international who was named London’s Teacher of the Year in 2005. From 2019 to 2021 he was the head of Woodcote High, the 1,200-pupil academy in Coulsdon.
As Inside Croydon reported in 2024, after losing his prestigious job, Mundy-Castle took his case to the Employment Tribunal. The tribunal considered more than 3,000 pages of submissions and evidence.
But Mundy-Castle’s “claims of direct race discrimination, race-related harassment, victimisation, whistleblowing detriment, automatically unfair dismissal (Section 103A Employment Rights Act 1996), unfair dismissal and wrongful dismissal” were said by the judge to be “not well-founded and are dismissed”.
Last month, Mundy-Castle’s appeal against that ruling was also rejected.
Case dismissed: a deputy judge of the High Court agreed to make his ruling public, following an application by Inside Croydon
Inside Croydon made a successful application to the judge of the ET appeal, Andrew Burns KC, for sight of the ruling.
“By order sealed on 24 June 2026, the Appellant’s application was dismissed and the Employment Appeal Tribunal ordered that the appeal was dismissed giving short-form reasons,” responded Mr Burns, Deputy Judge of the High Court.
“The Editor, Inside Croydon, has applied in writing on 17 July 2026 for a copy of the ruling because only judgments at full hearings are normally published online.”
And the judge explained: “A copy of the order and short-form reasons assists the public to examine the work of the Employment Appeal Tribunal (and the Employment Tribunal) and the work of the judges.
“It helps the public scrutinise the way in which courts and tribunals decide cases and to enable the public to understand how the justice system works and decisions are made.
No grounds: deputy High Court judge Andrew Burns KC
“It therefore falls squarely within the open justice principle. No application was made or granted to restrict the open justice principle in this case and the reasons are matters that were announced in public in open court. For those reasons it is appropriate and in accordance with open justice to supply a copy of the order and reasons.”
That court order is now publicly available for the first time, in pdf format, by clicking here.
Woodcote High’s sacking of Mundy-Castle in July 2021 was for gross misconduct over financial mismanagement. The school had initially brought 23 charges against him, leading to the dismissal. Most of the claims were upheld by an independent appeal panel.
In one example discussed in evidence at the ET, a film company, Doc Hearts, was hired by the school to do some filming for promotional social media posts. Doc Hearts was part-owned by a relative of Mundy-Castle. “We find that the evidence the claimant gave to the tribunal, that others took the decision to engage Doc Hearts, was not true.”
Three years later, when he took his case to the Employment Tribunal, the presiding judge seemed unimpressed. “The claimant presents himself as a ‘superstar Head Teacher’ with an ‘impeccable record’ before his employment with the respondent…”, meaning Woodcote High.
“We would observe that, together with reliability issues… the picture is probably more complex,” said Employment Judge Stephen Heath in his original, 102-page ruling.
“We found the claimant’s evidence unsatisfactory in a number of respects,” the judge said.
Public records show that Mundy-Castle had had a previous Employment Tribunal case in 2022 with The BEC Trust, in which claims of racial discrimination also featured.
And in July 2025, Mundy-Castle was at the Employment Tribunal again, this time bringing a claim against Overton Grange, a secondary in Sutton. Overton Grange didn’t sack Mundy-Castle. They just appointed someone else to the headteacher’s job, which they advertised in the autumn of 2023.
Again, Mundy-Castle’s case rested on allegations of racial discrimination.
The ruling on this case says: “We found that the selection panel which did the shortlisting complained of did not know the claimant was Black African when it made its decision. It could not therefore have excluded the claimant because of his race.”
Mundy-Castle had failed to show up for an arranged visit to the school. “The claimant did not attend interview and was never in a position where the respondent could decide to appoint him. The allegation that he was not appointed because of his race therefore also had no reasonable prospect of success.”
And elsewhere in the ET decision it says: “The claimant…,” meaning Mundy-Castle, “… described his record at the time of applying to the respondent as being ‘impeccable and unblemished’. In our view, that is an inaccurate statement.
Upheld: the South London Employment Tribunal, based in Croydon, finished its hearings for this case in August 2024, but has only just published its full findings
“The claimant was dismissed from his job as the head teacher at Woodcote High School for serious financial mismanagement. This was his most recent significant head teacher role before applying to the respondent.”
There are some public reports that suggest Mundy-Castle was employed as a head teacher at a special needs school in Basingstoke, Coppice Spring Academy, in 2022. It is uncertain whether he stayed there for very long.
Since 2022, Mundy-Castle has been a member of External Reference Group, an independent community oversight body established by MOPAC, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime. “It provides community perspective, professional expertise, and lived experience to scrutinise Metropolitan Police reform and monitor the Mayor’s Action Plan,” according to City Hall.
Apart from reasonable expenses, members of the ERG, which meets four times a year, are paid a modest allowance of £1,000.
Read more: Coulsdon school’s ‘superstar head’ loses unfair dismissal case
Read more: Sacked ‘superstar’ headteacher refuses to resign MOPAC post
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