A teacher who tried to get students to satisfy his food fetish was this week banned from teaching in Scotland.
Gavin Bradford, 37, while teaching music at a college in Canada, asked students to smear themselves with ketchup and eggs and pour sour milk into their underwear in front of webcams; he asked one female pupil to stuff a pie down his pants.
The exchanges happened over the internet late at night. In all, he asked more than 20 girls as young as 12 to switch on their webcams during online conversations so he could watch them.
The incidents took place between 2006 and 2007 while Mr Bradford was on a short-term contract with Halton District School Board in Ontario. He resigned in April 2008.
He returned home to Glasgow after the Canadian scandal and got a job as a performing arts lecturer at Coatbridge College in January 2010.
He was judged “unfit to teach” by the General Teaching Council for Scotland’s fitness-to-teach panel this week after the Ontario authorities tipped off their Scottish counterparts about his behaviour. He did not turn up at the hearing in Edinburgh.
GTCS presenting officer Paul Reid said Mr Bradford’s conduct fell significantly short of the standards expected of a registered teacher.
He highlighted the nature of the correspondence between Mr Bradford and his pupils in Canada, in particular the fact that the “inappropriate and vulgar communications” had taken place outwith school hours.
Meanwhile, three teachers have waived their right to a full fitness-to- teach hearing and agreed to be removed from the teaching register.
- English teacher Ian Thom admitted being convicted of assaulting a 12- year-old pupil in Westhill, Aberdeenshire, in June last year by seizing his clothing and pushing him against a door. The assault resulted in a pound;150 fine. Mr Thom also admitted a charge of drink driving the same month for which he was fined pound;600 and disqualified from driving;
- Peter Allan, a secondary PE teacher, admitted being convicted last year of possessing and taking indecent photographs of children for which he was placed on probation for three years by Hamilton Sheriff Court;
- Stuart Scott, a primary teacher, admitted various sexual offences against two girls for which he was jailed for 35 months this year at Ayr Sheriff Court.
TEACHER FREED AFTER RAPE CONVICTION APPLIES TO RETURN TO CLASSA teacher jailed for rape and sexual assault whose conviction was later quashed has applied to rejoin the teaching register.
In 2005 James Boyle, then a teacher of English and history at All Saints Secondary in Glasgow, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a catalogue of rape and sexual assault offences in the 1970s.
The alleged offences against two girls and a boy were said to have been committed when Mr Boyle, then of Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, was aged between 14 and 20.
The girls were seven and 13 and the boy eight when the offences are alleged to have taken place.
But Mr Boyle, who went to university as a mature student and became a teacher at 41, has always maintained the allegations were made up and won an appeal against his conviction in 2009. A retrial was authorised and in 2010 the charges against him were found “not proven”.
Last week Mr Boyle, now in his mid-50s, was due to appear before the GTCS’s fitness-to-teach panel because he has applied to rejoin the teaching register.
He is accused of being unfit to teach due to allegations he raped and sexually assaulted one woman and sexually assaulted and attempted to rape another. He is also accused of sexually assaulting a man. The allegations all relate to the 1970s.
Mr Boyle arrived at the GTCS headquarters two hours after proceedings had begun. He was asked to leave after staff said they felt threatened by his behaviour. The hearing continues today.
