A school headteacher has been barred from teaching after a ski trip she organised saw pupils engaging in sexual activity and getting drunk.
Justine Drury arranged the trip to Switzerland for 12 students from CP Riverside School in Nottingham, a school catering to 13–18-year-olds with behavioural or social challenges. The trip took place from January 27 to February 4, 2017.
She denied failing to take adequate steps to minimise the risk of inappropriate behaviour among pupils to prevent them from engaging in sexual activity, despite the school being aware that eight of the students were sexually active. According to a Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct panel, 10 male pupils were accommodated on one floor of the hotel, while two female pupils shared a room on a different floor where 52-year-old Mrs. Drury was also staying.
Mrs Drury, 52, admitted to an investigation that Pupil A revealed to her on the first day while drunk ‘that he had sex with a boy’. A witness said that he overheard a conversation between two pupils on the first day of the trip that Pupil A had sex with another pupil in her room.
The witness also found her on the second night in a male pupil’s bed and Pupil A revealed to him that she had sex with three of the male pupils. Pupil A also disclosed on the third day that Pupil B had sex with a male pupil the night before ‘in exchange for £30’, reports the Mirror.
The panel said despite Pupil A’s claim of ‘potential non consensual sexual activity’ on the first day of the trip, Mrs Drury did nothing to prevent the risk of sexual activity happening again.The panel was also told that Pupil A said on the third day, her sex with another pupil was filmed on a phone by another pupil who used the recording to blackmail her into having sex with him.
A witness claimed he took the phone from the boy but could not access it to see if there was ‘anything on it that was going to get him into trouble’.
The panel said the trip should have been abandoned and police informed as well as parents, carers, school trustees and council. It added that Mrs Drury failed to confiscate each pupil’s phones or investigate the matters or tell the police.
The disciplinary panel was also told that one or more pupils had a knife with them, had been shoplifting and had stolen 10 bottles of spirits after breaking into the hotel restaurant – and that the pupils had drunk alcohol during the trip.
The panel also found Mrs Drury guilty of not disclosing the serious incidents that had happened in Switzerland – only telling trustees that it had ‘been eventful’. The hearing also found she had not acted with integrity and had failed to adequately safeguard pupils.
Mrs Drury was banned from teaching for five years.
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