A Catholic teacher was sacked from an Anglican school after sharing his views about abortion and same-sex marriage during a diversity training day.
A tribunal has been considering the case after the teacher filed claims of harassment and direct discrimination related to his religious and protected beliefs.
Benedykt (Ben) Dybowski, a practising Catholic, was dismissed from The Bishop of Llandaff Church in Wales High School near Cardiff following the training event in March 2023, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/18/teacher-sacked-sharing-views-same-sex-marriage/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">reports</mark></a> the <em>Daily Telegraph.</em><br><br>The training session was delivered by Diverse Cymru Training, during which Mr Dybowski asked the trainer about expressing personal beliefs and if they amounted to discrimination. The Catholic teacher then went on to explain how his views were that true marriage is a union between a man and a woman, that human life begins at conception and that abortion is the taking of innocent human life, adding also that he was critical of some aspects of Sharia law, the tribunal heard.
The trainer responded that the claimant was free to hold such views but that expressing them might be “regarded as discrimination”, the Cardiff tribunal was told. It also heard that Mr Dybowski quietly took opportunities to discuss his views with pupils and staff on a number of occasions.
Mr Dybowski had a meeting with headteacher Marc Belli the day following the training session, as a result of other members of staff expressing concerns about the views he'd expressed, the tribunal heard.
During the meeting, Mr Dybowski discussed his social media activity and how he often expresses his beliefs, including topics like same-sex marriage and Islam, the tribunal was told.
The headteacher reminded Mr Dybowski of social media guidelines and the Education Workforce Council (EWC) regulations, explaining that promoting his views, when publicly expressed, could potentially harm students or staff, especially given the school’s diverse community and values, the tribunal heard.
Subsequently, Mr Dybowski’s employment at the school, where he had worked as a teaching assistant since October 2022, was terminated.
His claims of harassment and direct discrimination related to his religious and protected beliefs were dismissed by the tribunal, with the judge saying the school could exercise a degree of control over how beliefs were “manifested” in accordance with its values.
The tribunal also ruled that his criticisms of Sharia law were an opinion and therefore not a protected belief, the <em>Telegraph</em> reports.
Judge Samantha Moore said that while Mr Dybowski’s views on marriage, abortion and gender amounted to protected beliefs, his expressed views on Sharia law were deemed an opinion and thus were not protected.
The judge said it was “reasonable” for Mr Belli to become very concerned and to have reached a conclusion that he could not rely on Mr Dybowski refraining from discussions with pupils that the school deemed inappropriate, adding that “none of what subsequently ensued was because the claimant held his particular beliefs”.
The judge added: “The claimant has a right to hold his beliefs and to manifest them but he is under the same prohibitions as the rest of society to not discriminate or harass others.
“Every circumstance turns on the particular facts of the claim. [The school] was entitled to want to exercise a degree of control over how beliefs were manifested within the school environment in accordance with the school’s values given the potential power imbalance between teachers and pupils and in the context of potentially vulnerable pupils.”
<em>Photo: Entrance to The Bishop of Llandaff Church in Wales High School (screenshot from telegraph.co.uk).</em>
