A teacher has been banned indefinitely after telling a female student it was “good it was a non-school uniform day” as people could see how “beautiful” she was.
Karl Smith, who was head of computing at The Warriner School in Banbury, was also found to have privately messaged another pupil outside of school.
He had also given her his personal contact details like his WhatsApp number, despite knowing she was vulnerable.
Several of these messages were sent outside of term time and late into the evening past 11pm, and included him discussing the difficulties he was having at school.
In one message, he told a student, only named as Pupil B, that he had kept chocolate behind for her, telling her: “Begging for food and fluttering your eyelashes isn’t really earning them.”
He went on to say: “You are very nice though, so that works in your favour.... Maybe I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.”
He was also found to have hugged another pupil in a separate incident.
Concerns were first raised by a pupil about Mr Smith in November 2022, and he was suspended after the school launched an investigation and referred the case to the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA).
With regards to Pupil B, Mr Smith told the panel: “I cannot recall the exact events that led to me giving her my personal email address, but I recall it was because I needed to vent about the school policy and I did not want to do so over the school email system.”
After she approached him in November 2022 to say that he could get in trouble for the messages, he told her to delete their conversations.
Another student told the school investigation that she had found his comment “creepy” after he called her “beautiful” and that it had felt like “more than a normal compliment to come from a teacher”.
The TRA panel's judgement found that Mr Smith's actions "had many of the hallmarks of someone in the early stages of pursuing inappropriate sexual relationships with pupils".
He has now been banned from teaching indefinitely, with the judgement reading: "The panel considered Mr Smith's conduct was not minor in nature, or a mere temporary lapse. It was a sustained course of action."
Due to the seriousness of his behaviour, he will not be entitled to apply for the restoration of his eligibility to teach, the panel said.
The former teacher, in a statement to the panel, said: "Even though I was not in my right mind at the time, it was still wrong and should never have happened."
"I deeply regret my part in all of this, not just because it has destroyed me mentally, but because of the impact that my actions have had on the young people affected."
