A teacher who sent a vulnerable student out of class for taking off his face mask to drink water has been fired.
The 15-year-old was told to leave just 38 seconds after arriving for class at St Clare’s School in Porthcawl, Bridgend County, a tribunal heard.
The court report said the teenager “documented additional learning and behavioral needs.”
It added that after the teacher ordered the boy in December 2020, she forgot she had done so.
The teacher, identified in the report as Ms. S. Smith, appealed her dismissal but was dismissed.
The report said Ms Smith had not checked on the student, named Student J, for 24 minutes as he moved to a different part of the building at the time.
The teacher’s colleagues at the private school expressed concerns that a child could be sent out in the cold long enough to meet the “damage test” threshold and called the local authority’s protection team.
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Ms Smith was suspended four days later before being fired for gross misconduct in February 2021. She appealed her dismissal in February this year.
The Labor Court, sitting in Cardiff, heard Ms Smith was keen on wearing face masks because of her concerns about Covid.
Her son, who previously had cancer, had been advised to shield himself earlier in the pandemic.
For this reason, Ms. Schmidt did not return to face-to-face teaching until September 2020.
But she had gone on holiday to Kefalonia in Greece with her son and the rest of her family in August 2020.
Judge Angharad Lloyd-Lawrie said she accepts Ms Smith’s concerns about Covid but said she tried to mislead the court about how fearful she was.
The judge said Ms Smith’s claim that she and her family had been social distancing while on holiday was implausible.
The court heard that after her student stood outside the classroom for nearly 20 minutes, she was called to another part of the building to attend another lesson.
The court heard that after her student stood outside the classroom for nearly 20 minutes, she was called to another part of the building to attend another lesson.
Several of Ms Smith’s colleagues expressed “low concerns” about her behavior but did not initially tell her where the boy had gone.
The judge said it was likely they did so as they disagreed with the way the plaintiff disciplined students, “including her yelling at students.”
When Mrs. Smith realized the boy had disappeared, she left her class unsupervised for eight minutes to find him.
They returned to class together after another teacher told Mrs. Smith where he was.
The court was told that Ms Smith “became aggressive” during her suspension hearing on December 8, 2020, citing derogatory terms to two of her colleagues before being escorted from the premises.
Ms Smith argued in her appeal that she was wrongly dismissed and that her dismissal was not a reasonable response to what had happened.
But Judge Lloyd-Lawrie said the dismissal was “within the range of reasonable answers”.
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