Art teacher banned after letting pupils take semi-naked photos of themselves for schoolwork
17 June 2022, 01:16 | Updated: 17 June 2022, 02:56
An art teacher whose pupils submitted in semi-naked photos for a project has been sacked and barred from the profession.
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Emma Wright let pupils take partly naked photos of themselves as part of her art lessons.
The students, who were as young as 15, were photographed posing performing offensive gestures, wearing underwear or smoking a cigarette.
Images showed them holding alcohol or using their hands to cover their breasts.
Emma Wright was referred to the Teaching Regulation Agency [TRA] after her Northamptonshire school's head of design technology found the images.
Mrs Wright, a teacher of 18 years, told a teaching panel that she had introduced new art to her pupils but did not believe it to be sexual in its nature.
While the 42-year-old accepted the work was "suggestive", she had not expected students to recreate it and said she should have told pupils their images were inappropriate, but personal and work related factors stopped her from doing so.
The panel said she should have clearly told the students not to recreate the work and challenged the images.
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The TRA said her class was "highly inappropriate" and breached safeguarding rules because she did not take adequate steps when dealing with the sensitive artwork.
She was banned from teaching after Alan Meyrick, the decision maker, said Mrs Wright had seriously fallen foul of teaching standards and failed to safeguard her pupils' wellbeing.
He said: "Whilst the panel was satisfied that there was a low risk of repetition, it did not find that Mrs Wright had fully reflected on the safeguarding implications of allowing pupils to take photographs of themselves or others in a state of undress.
"The risk of harm, due to the lack of safeguarding pupils, was a significant factor in forming that opinion.
"In my view, it is necessary to impose a prohibition order in order to maintain public confidence in the profession."
Mrs Wright, who had "previous good history", can apply against her teaching ban in 2024. The risk of a repeat incident was deemed low by the panel.
