A secondary school teacher who “chugged” a water bottle containing gin in her classroom before throwing up in a staff bathroom has been banned from the profession indefinitely.
Annika Kiran Kapur was suspended and subsequently sacked from Djanogly City Academy, Nottingham, in early 2025 after she was found to have consumed alcohol while teaching.
A professional conduct panel heard from several witnesses who saw Ms Kapur slur her words and act in “an exaggerated manner”, which caused some pupils to ask whether she was drunk.
One witness said that while intoxicated and complaining of how her students were not listening to her, Ms Kapur told her “this class terrifies me”.
Ms Kapur said she had made a “grievous error” and “horrible mistake” and admitted that she was guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.
In January 2025, Ms Kapur brought a water bottle to the school, which contained gin and lemon.
She stated that the bottle had been in her bag from her “birthday weekend” and she had not realised it still contained alcohol when she started drinking it.
Ms Kapur said she could not spit it out because her students would question what was in the bottle, so she “chugged it to stop myself vomiting” and consumed around a third of the bottle.
Witnesses described seeing Ms Kapur slur her words and speak in a way that was out of character. One person told the panel she had been gesticulating with her hands and seemed unsteady on her feet.
The panel heard that a student had his head on the desk and Ms Kapur “gently pulled him up from the desk with his hair”. Ms Kapur claimed she had not pulled the pupil’s head off the desk but had patted him.
After being asked to step outside the classroom, she began to “retch” before going into the staff toilet and vomiting, the witness stated.
Another witness said she had struggled to get her class’s attention and was overenunciating.
She asked Ms Kapur on two or three occasions if she was feeling “ok”, and Ms Kapur said that she was fine, just “a bit tired”.
Some of the pupils had asked if she was “ok” and, after Ms Kapur left the classroom, questioned if she was drunk.
Asked if students were safe at the time, Ms Kapur said that she “wasn’t that bad”, that she had a “dizzy headache”, and that she remembered exactly what she was doing.
Ms Kapur is prohibited from teaching indefinitely, but may apply for her prohibition order to be set aside in April 2028.
