Secret film teacher found guilty of unacceptable conduct

A teacher who secretly filmed unruly behaviour in the classroom for a television documentary was today found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.

Angela Mason, of Aberdare Gardens, London, was issued with a suspension order which bans her from teaching for one year.

She went undercover at several schools in the capital and the north east of England for the Channel 5 programme Classroom Chaos.

Using a camera hidden in her handbag, she recorded a number of incidents of pupils misbehaving and disrupting lessons she covered as a supply teacher in late 2004 and early 2005.

Mrs Mason admitted carrying out the secret filming, but denied it amounted to unacceptable professional conduct, arguing that she was acting in the public interest.

But at a hearing in Birmingham the General Teaching Council (GTC), the body which regulates the profession in England, ruled the public interest defence was not strong enough to justify the breach of trust implicit in the secret filming.

Issuing the judgment, Andrew Baxter - the chair of the GTC committee - said that secretly filming students would constitute unacceptable professional conduct in all but the most exceptional circumstances.

"We are not satisfied the public interest argument which Mrs Mason makes is sufficiently strong and exceptional to justify the secret filming of pupils which she undertook," he said.

"She was employed and paid by these schools to teach pupils in her care.

"In fact, her true motivation was to obtain secret film of the pupils for the purposes of a television programme. In that respect we find that her conduct abused the trust of the head teachers, staff and pupils at the schools."

Mr Baxter said the committee decided that Mrs Mason had not deliberately mismanaged the pupils in her care to exacerbate classroom disruption for the purposes of the documentary, but she had failed to use up-to-date techniques to control their behaviour.

"Mrs Mason accepted it was not part of her duty as a registered teacher to secretly film pupils," he went on.

"We find that her motivation is irrelevant. Mrs Mason was, in our view, acting primarily as a journalist who was being paid to obtain secret film for a documentary.

"This in our view was inconsistent with her role as a registered teacher."

Mr Baxter said the committee felt that the suspension would demonstrate to the public and the profession the seriousness of the breach of trust in this case.

The GTC cleared 60-year-old Mrs Mason of a second charge, of failing to promote the education and welfare of students by not managing their behaviour properly.

Mrs Mason returned to the classroom after a 30-year break from teaching, having originally worked as a teacher in the 1970s.

The tribunal heard that she began supply teaching again to gather material for a programme about changes in the English and history curriculum, but was so shocked by the indiscipline of the pupils that she changed the focus of the documentary.

Addressing the committee in her own mitigation, Mrs Mason said: "What I felt was that what was missing from the debate was actual evidence of what was actually going on.

"There may have been discussions in learned journals, but we wanted to bring to the public hard evidence of what was meant by low level disruption and the impact it was having on pupils and the teachers sent to teach them.

"I believe what we were doing was in the public interest. I am clearly disappointed that the committee did not agree."

Mrs Mason said she saw "no evidence whatsoever" that her actions had caused long-term harm.

After the judgment, a spokesman for television channel Five said: "Five has been supportive of Angie throughout this case and we remain proud that our programme was an important part of an ongoing debate on disruptive behaviour in the classroom.

"We are pleased the committee found the programme was undertaken responsibly, but disappointed that they decided to shoot the honest messenger."