A teacher who showed pornography to pupils is among more than 450 staff banned from teaching in England over the past five years, a BBC investigation has found. Sexually motivated, inappropriate conduct was the most common reason for bans, accounting for a third of all cases.
The BBC analysed judgements from the National College of Teaching and Leadership (now the Teaching Regulation Agency) between April 2013 and March 2018. Inappropriate conduct made up more than half of all bans following misconduct hearings, with a third having a sexual element. Cases included teachers kissing pupils, showing them pornography, and engaging in sexual relationships.
Male teachers accounted for about 70% of cases, of which more than half had a sexual dimension, including 10 involving sexual offence convictions and 17 related to indecent images. Among the 165 female teacher cases, 46 were for dishonesty, 37 for professional misconduct, and eight for being drunk at work.
Physical education (PE) teachers faced the most investigations, with 23 cases, followed by music (22 cases) and science (21 cases). Other notable bans included a teacher who measured pupils' penises in the 1970s, a teacher who stole £27,000 worth of books, and a head teacher who referred to special needs pupils as 'road kill'.
The National Education Union said the number of bans was 'tiny' compared with the 500,000 teachers in schools. An NSPCC spokeswoman said: 'Safeguarding children must always be a top priority for teaching professionals - school should be a place where young people feel safe and are able to flourish.'
