A successful head teacher who was subjected to allegations of racism and Islamophobia and eventually forced to leave the job she loved because of stress has been awarded more than £400,000 damages at the High Court.

Erica Connor, now 57, won the compensation for the psychiatric injury she suffered while employed at the New Monument Primary School in Woking, Surrey, which has mainly Muslim pupils.

A judge in London awarded her a total of £407,781 against the local education authority, Surrey County Council, which had contested the case, including sums for her pain and suffering and loss of income and pension.

Her case was that the authority failed to give her the support she needed in relation to the conduct of two members of the school’s governing body, Muslims Paul Martin and Mr Mumtaz Saleem.

As a result Miss Connor, from Esher, Surrey, who joined the school as deputy head in September 1994 and was promoted to head in 1998, suffered from the stress which led to her early retirement on the grounds of ill health in December 2006.

Deputy Judge John Leighton Williams QC ruled that the former employers of Miss Connor, who qualified as a teacher in 1974 and had achieved “considerable success” as a head, had been in breach of their duty of care to her.

He said she was to be compensated for a severe depressive episode associated with symptoms of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) which had prevented her pursuing her teaching career.

In the past five years she had lost the “considerable spark” that had characterised her life, her self-confidence and self-respect.

The judge said: “She remains depressed some two and a half years after she was certified as unfit to work. She has suffered greatly but happily the picture is not all gloom.”

He considered that she would not return to teaching, but had started doing voluntary unpaid work.

She had “considerable abilities to offer for the benefit of others” and she was “likely to recover the ability to take on some responsibility in, for example, a charity where her organisational skills could be put to good and rewarding use”.

Giving the background to the case, the judge said that until 2003 the school had done “very well” under her leadership and the governing body had operated successfully and “more importantly” there were positive links with the local community, including the Muslim community.

It was clear that from late 2003 down to the summer of 2005 the governing body was “dysfunctional” because of the conduct “in particular” of Mr Martin and Mr Saleem, who he said were not sued by Miss Connor.

He said: “I am satisfied that they sought to monopolise governing body meetings with a view to imposing their own agenda, and were prepared to do so regardless of the interests of the school and anyone who resisted that agenda.

”What was that agenda? It was at the very least to introduce an increasing role for the Muslim religion in New Monument School.”

The judge said there were two closely linked causes of Miss Connor’s stress and depression: “Mr Martin’s and Mr Saleem’s conduct, in particular that of Mr Martin, and the defendant’s failure to provide the claimant with support to protect her from such conduct and its consequences.”

He said: “In responding to Mr Martin’s demands, complaints and suggestions the defendants lost sight of the adverse effects of such conduct and their response to such on the school.

”The lack of timely intervention in the governing body meant that Mr Martin’s and Mr Saleem’s conduct there had the effect of tearing apart the governing body, and these matters, together with poor response by the defendants, had as their effect two years of anxiety and low morale for the school staff, stress leading to need for early retirement in some staff and the claimant, and disruption in the local community with, on the evidence, little, if anything, positive, to show for it.”

Miss Connor, who stopped working at the school in September 2005 because of the stress, said after the ruling: “The last five years have been a long haul, at great personal cost to myself and my family, so I am thrilled that justice has prevailed.”

She added: “It is unfortunate that matters have taken so long to resolve, and at such a financial cost, but I finally feel vindicated in terms of the accusations of racism and Islamophobia against myself - accusations which attacked the core of my being and my values.

”I believe in equal opportunity. I believe every child has the right to achieve to their full potential in an environment that celebrates diversity and respects the beliefs and culture of each individual.

”This is a state, non-denominational school. For a protracted length of time I was subjected to dreadful pressures from a small group of individuals, unrepresentative of the local community, without the support I would have expected from Surrey County Council.”

By Cathy Gordon