A primary school teacher in Dundee has been banned from the profession after fabricating a two-year deception in which she claimed to have terminal leukaemia and even faked her own death. The woman, identified only as Teacher F, misled colleagues, parents, and pupils with elaborate lies about her health.
According to a report by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), the teacher first told colleagues in May 2021 that she had been diagnosed with leukaemia and was undergoing chemotherapy. She shaved her head and wore a wig to support the story, and later claimed the cancer had spread, requiring the removal of part of her lung. She also said doctors had given her six months to live.
To make her deception more convincing, she attended school using crutches, a wheelchair, a breathing tube, and even a prosthetic leg. She told pupils she wanted to spend her “final weeks” getting married and bought a bridesmaid dress for one of the children. In one instance, pupils and staff waved at an air ambulance she falsely claimed she was travelling in.
The deception reached its peak in March 2023 when the teacher, pretending to be her own aunt, emailed colleagues to announce that she had died from cancer. The GTCS described her conduct as “a chronic and elaborate deception” and ruled that she was “unfit to teach.”
A colleague expressed shock, saying: “We just can’t imagine why she did this. Why go to such extreme lengths of faking, fabricating and fudging the truth? Everyone who knows her has been left gobsmacked at her cavalier disregard for the truth for a whole two years. It’s beyond bizarre.”
The GTCS concluded that her behaviour represented “a pattern of conduct involving deliberate dishonesty over an extended period of time” and that she had “fallen significantly short of the standards for a registered teacher.” Teacher F admitted her lies before the disciplinary panel and has now been struck off the register.
