A primary school teacher accused of putting a sock in a pupil’s mouth in a bid to quieten him down has been banned from the classroom.
It was also discovered that Martin Myers, 47, had ‘whispered’ SATs exam answers to pupils and asked baffled students to ‘vote’ on whether or not he should remain at the school.
A disciplinary panel heard how the teacher had added annotations to the side of tests in a bid to help students at Ecton Village Primary School in Northampton.
And after a pupil started talking during a reading lesson, Mr Myers supposedly took off his shoe and put his sock into the stunned youngster’s mouth.
Martin Myers, 47, taught at Ecton Village Primary School in Northampton (pictured)
The National College of Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) panel heard how the student was left feeling ’embarrassed’ by the bizarre incident.
Although Mr Myers – who worked at the school from September 2010 – had admitted there was an ‘incident with a sock’, he claimed that he had told the student to ‘put a sock in it’, before throwing the object in the youngster’s direction.
However, the panel reported that his evidence was not ‘credible’ and preferred accounts given by two of his pupils which said he had put the sock in the student’s mouth.
It was also told how the shameless teacher had helped students achieve higher marks in their exams during the 2014 to 2015 academic year.
A worried member of staff initially approached an investigating officer to say ‘she had concerns that Mr Myers had assisted year 6 pupils during their SATs exams.’
A worried member of staff at the school (pictured) initially approached an investigating officer to say ‘she had concerns that Mr Myers had assisted year 6 pupils during their SATs exams’
The panel heard how the teacher ‘read out the questions and whispered the answers’ during one mental maths exam, and it was later discovered that at the side of some papers were scribblings which were done by an ‘adult’s hand’ which would have ‘assisted the pupils in answering the questions.’
All of the teacher’s pupils achieved level 4 or above in the tests, a moderation exercise found that the marks Mr Myers had given were ‘inflated’.
When the pupils later repeated their examinations using a previous paper, their marks were ‘considerably lower than those achieved in the examinations invigilated by Mr Myers’.
In a statement given to the school’s own disciplinary panel, the 47-year-old denied any wrongdoing and claimed that the headteacher had much more to gain from the grade manipulation.
However, the panel was satisfied that he had altered the papers and that the students would have answered differently had it not been for his assistance.
Although Mr Myers – who worked at the school (pictured) from September 2010 – had admitted there was an ‘incident with a sock’, he claimed that he had told the student to ‘put a sock in it’
Around June 2015, Mr Myers then supposedly asked students to ‘vote’ on whether or not they wanted him to stay on.
If they gave positive answers, he then asked them to write letters of support to the school in a bid to keep him in employment.
It was found that he had ‘encouraged pupils to take action on his behalf and to feel responsible for not preventing his departure from the school’.
Despite Mr Myers denying any wrongdoing, the NCTL panel found him guilty of the offences and banned him from the classroom indefinitely, on January 12 this year.
It was also ruled that he would not be able to apply for the prohibition order to be set aside until 2023.
Head of the panel Dawn Dandy said: ‘In this case, the panel has found the allegations proven and found that those proven facts amount to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute.’