'Simple error' | No racial motive behind typo in teacher's name, judge rules

An employment tribunal has rejected a teacher’s claims of racial and sexual discrimination against a Buckinghamshire grammar school, ruling that a misspelling of her surname by an exams officer was a typing error, not an act of racial harassment.

Chandrika Punshon, who identifies as Indo-Canadian, brought a series of claims against The Royal Latin School, including direct race and sex discrimination, harassment, and damaging accusations of professional misconduct. But all were dismissed, with the tribunal criticising her conduct as “scandalous”, “vexatious”, and “intimidating”.

The tribunal found that the exams officer’s mistake - entering her name as “cpunshan” instead of “cpunshon” in a software system - was a one-off error, swiftly corrected and followed by an apology. There was no evidence the mistake was linked to her ethnicity.

“We are satisfied that this was simply a typing error which [the colleague] identified and corrected. We find that the error was an unintentional mistake rather than a conscious decision” the judgment stated, adding that Punshon herself had also misspelled colleagues’ names in communications.