Banned: Britain's worst teacher

A teacher who constantly left his pupils' books at home or in his car has become the first to be banned from the classroom for life because of incompetence.

A tribunal ruled that Nisar Ahmed, a business studies teacher at John O'Gaunt Community Technology College in Hungerford, Berkshire,was "incapable" of raising his performance to meet a satisfactory standard.

A total of 13 teachers have been barred from the profession for a variety of fixed periods since the General Teaching Council (GTC) was set up 10 years ago, but Mr Ahmed is the first to be told he can never return to a state school.

Mr Ahmed, who had been a teacher for 13 years but had only been at the school for 18 months, faced disciplinary action over his teaching standards after a visit by Ofsted inspectors in 2008. The GTC tribunal hearing in Birmingham was told that his organisation was "persistently poor". He failed to complete attendance registers regularly and left pupils' work folders in his car or at home when they were needed in the classroom.

"Marking of students' work was persistently not done or was done very late," said Rosalind Burford, who chaired the disciplinary panel. "You regularly failed to undertake proper lesson plans. This resulted in a lack of pace and challenge in your lessons, a lack of clear learning objectives and an excessive focus on 'doing' rather than learning."

The school's former executive headteacher, Michael Wheale, added that he was below standard in lesson management, organisation, monitoring and lesson planning.

Mrs Burford added: "Your actions fall seriously short of the levels of competence expected of you ... and amount to serious professional incompetence.

"The failings in your performance were fundamental and adversely affected your students to a significant degree. We felt that you pose a significant risk of repeating your actions and that pupils might be seriously disadvantaged as a consequence.

"In our view, Mr Ahmed does not possess the capability ever to achieve the requisite standards and no useful purpose would be served by specifying a period of time [for the ban]."

Mr Ahmed, who resigned from the school as soon as competency procedures began, has worked for supply teaching agencies before and after his period with John O'Gaunt. The agencies said his work was of an "acceptable standard".