A secondary-school teacher has been banned from the profession for life after sending explicit pictures of herself to a 15-year-old pupil.
Georgia Lowe, 27, had taught at Kingsmead School in Hednesford, Staffordshire, when the inappropriate exchanges were discovered by the boy’s mother.
A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel heard that the relationship had began in 2021, just months after Ms Lowe began in her role, when she engaged the pupil in late-night email sessions.
These would use emojis like the heart symbol, nicknames, and often end in an ‘X’, representing a kiss, the panel heard. Ms Lowe also used phrases like “make me proud”, “try not to miss me too much” and “you’ve already made my day.”
She was suspended from the school in October after the messages came to light, but contacted the pupil again and sent pictures of herself in her underwear, the TRA panel was told.
Ms Lowe had only been employed as a trainee teacher in July. The TRA panel found there was little public interest in her retaining her position as a teacher due there being “no evidence of any positive contribution made to the teaching profession” in her “very short career.”
After resigning as a teacher, Ms Lowe was found guilty of engaging in sexual communication with a child and was handed a 14-month suspended jail term. She was required to complete up to 20 days of rehabilitation activity and 120 hours of unpaid work.
The judge also imposed a restraining order preventing Ms Lowe from contacting the pupil for at least five years.
In his sentencing remarks, the judge said Ms Lowe’s acts were a “gross breach of trust” adding she: “used the environment in which you were working with [the pupil] to pursue what was evidently your sexual interest in him”.
“You moved on to the passing of inappropriate notes to him, and ultimately, by the end of the period that we are concerned with, matters escalated to private digital communications between you and him, including you sending him images of yourself in your underwear,” the judge said.
“The concerning aspect of your case is that after matters came to light, by his mother having found out what was going on, you were spoken to, and yet you still had another face-to-face meeting with him at school, and ultimately, when the investigation was launched and you were suspended from work, you contacted him again, and that included the sending of the images of yourself to him.”
Decision maker Marc Cavey said on behalf of the secretary of state that Ms Lowe’s behaviour was “incompatible with working as a teacher.”
He decided she should be prohibited from teaching indefinitely and unable to apply for restoration of her eligibility.
