Frequent personal contact with pupils is almost always unacceptable professional conduct. The huge danger is that over-familiar messaging looks exactly the same as the grooming activities of a sexual predator. So the regulator often takes charges of sexual content and sexual motive to a public hearing. This makes defendant teachers despair that their reputation is gone forever.
But by calling careful evidence before an intelligent panel, it is possible for that to be avoided. Our client was a bright scientist from abroad who went into teaching without formal training. He came from a culture where pupil/teacher relations are informal and supportive. The independent school he taught in had the same culture and emphasised the importance of building rapport with students as individuals and being there for all their many issues as they became adults.
During the Covid lockdowns this support had to go online and become virtual. It also became crucial for student wellbeing. Our client had a bond with three of his science students, one of whom had major mental health issues and another who felt very different from her peers. During 2020 to 2021 he found himself messaging these students thousands of times at all times of day and during weekends and holidays, essentially chatting about everything in their lives. This including telling them he missed them. He met the students out of school for catch-ups in public. These contacts carried on via WhatsApp after the students left the school, and on one occasion that included a meal and card game with a student at his flat.
Our client was investigated and dismissed by his school, which he felt aggrieved by as he thought he was following their pastoral ethos, but had no idea that in England he would then also face a public trial of whether he was a predator years after the events. The TRA brought a number of charges for failing to maintain appropriate boundaries including messaging of a sexual nature and sexual motivation. One of the students gave evidence for the TRA.
In response we called evidence from colleagues which confirmed the pastoral emphasis and gathered testimonials on the teacher’s cultural background and good character. He explained his own isolation during Covid lockdowns to the panel and his regret at not curtailing the messaging or sharing far more with colleagues. The panel carefully listened to the evidence and sifted the many thousands of pages of evidence in this case and found that the quantity and nature of the contacts went beyond what was appropriate but that:
“…the panel considered the vast amount of evidence of Mr X’s extensive pastoral role at the School. The panel were mindful of the ethos of the School, which they found was overwhelmingly one in which pastoral support is encouraged and that Mr X’s actions were in fact motivated by a desire to build relationships rooted in mutual respect. The panel noted that the provision of pastoral support became even more important in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The panel was therefore not satisfied that the conduct of Teacher, in relation to the facts found proved, involved breaches of the Teachers’ Standards. The panel did not, therefore, consider that Mr X’s conduct fell significantly short of the standard of behaviour expected of a teacher.”
They then had no difficulty in rejecting that the messaging was sexual in nature or sexually motivated and the TRA failed to prove any of their case. With no findings of misconduct there is no published decision and our client is carrying on his career as a scientist, but after his experiences he tells us it is highly unlikely that he would ever wish to teach science in England again.