Leeds teacher struck off after watching porn in Year 7 class

A supply teacher has been struck off after he admitted watching a porn video while teaching a class of 11 and 12-year-olds.

Amar Raza Hussain, 38, was caught watching the video while teaching at Lawnswood High School, Leeds, in April.

He was barred from teaching indefinitely after a misconduct hearing by the National College for Teaching and Leadership earlier this month found him guilty of "unacceptable professional conduct".

The hearing was told how Hussain was caught after safeguarding software on the school's network detected him watching pornography from a USB stick.

Panel chair Fiona Tankard said: "The panel is satisfied that the conduct of Mr Hussain fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession.

She added: "Mr Hussain's attention was diverted from teaching his pupils, therefore he was not providing them with the mutual respect and dignity that the class deserved.

"Mr Hussain also knew, or ought to have known, that viewing such images on the school's network would be a breach of the school's IT policy and therefore deliberately breached this policy.

"Mr Hussain also ran what the panel considered to be an unacceptable risk of the images being seen by pupils."

Hussain said he had been going through a "traumatic period" at the time of the incident following the death of his father.

But the panel said a prohibition order was "proportionate and appropriate".

Hussain was registered as a supply teacher with a recruitment company in May 2014 and had been working at the school from January this year until he was suspended. He will not be able to have the order overturned until December 2018.

Jo Bell, headteacher at Lawnswood High, said: "It was our own, very robust, safeguarding measures which flagged up this inappropriate behaviour and enabled us to act swiftly and to ensure no pupils were harmed.

"We liaised closely with the supply agency who supplied him to us to ensure the appropriate security checks had been carried out by the agency prior to him temporarily working at our school."