Justine Drury, a former principal of CP Riverside School in Nottingham, has been banned from the profession after a failure to stop students engaging in inappropriate behaviour on a skiing trip to Switzerland in 2017. Drury was found guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” by the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) after a misconduct panel hearing. The TRA said that Drury had failed to get parental consent for all of the pupils attending the trip and had not taken adequate steps to prevent “inappropriate behaviour” by students. The hearing was told that on multiple occasions, teenagers had sex during the trip and one pupil reportedly stole knives from a hotel kitchen.
Drury’s prohibition order will be reviewed after five years. She had been principal of the school, which provides “alternative education provision” for children aged 13 to 16 with “behaviour or social issues”, since September 2015. In November 2017, allegations were made about incidents that had taken place on the trip. These were then referred to the TRA in December 2018. A statement by a witness submitted to the hearing found that 10 out of the 12 pupils attending the trip had special educational needs. Eight were known to be sexually active, seven had substance misuse problems, and three had current involvement with the justice system.
The panel believed that some pupils attending the trip would have been identified as unsuitable if individual assessments had been conducted. Three staff members and two ski instructors had been organised for supervision, but one staff member was an apprentice. The panel found that while “some steps” had been taken to reduce risks, such as separating boys and girls into different floors, the pupils were left unsupervised in their bedrooms, leaving them susceptible to engaging in sexual activity. The hearing said: “It was evident insufficient steps had been taken to reduce the risk of sexual activity, as this likely took place on multiple occasions.”
No pupils present on the trip were witnesses or provided statements to the hearing. However, the panel found that Drury “fundamentally failed to safeguard one or more pupils on the ski trip and acted in breach of a number of policies, procedures and guidance”. Her “failure to disclose the full scope of the incidents, which took place on the trip, fell far below the ethical standards expected of a teacher, particularly given her status as a head teacher”
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