A teacher has been banned from classrooms in Wales after a tribunal heard she got drunk in class and started swearing at pupils during a lesson that turned into a ‘mini rave’.
Alice Ashton, who taught at Ysgol Bro Caereinion near Welshpool, Powys, swigged alcohol from an Evian bottle in class on January 17 last year, a panel heard.
The lesson ‘spiralled out of control’ and turned into a ‘mini rave, with loud music, shouting and dancing’, a fitness to practice tribunal was told.
One 16-year-old told the hearing Ashton also swore, calling the whole class ‘little s**ts’.
The Education Workforce Council panel heard the lesson took place just four months after Ashton had been convicted of drink driving.
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She was described as ‘smiley and happy’ before she started to become ‘agitated’.
Giving evidence in person, a 16 year-old schoolgirl said Ashton drank orange liquid which smelled of alcohol while playing music from her laptop.
The student, referred to as Pupil H, said fellow classmates discussed afterwards how odd the teacher’s behaviour had been.
She said Ashton had taught her ‘boring’ PSE numerous times before and were usually about alcohol and drug awareness but not on that day.
The pupil said she had been sitting in the front row of the class and could smell alcohol from the Evian water bottle filled with orange liquid.
She told the hearing the bottle was full at the start of the lesson and almost empty by the end.
Pupil H said: ‘She was very, very close to us. There was a slight alcoholic smell. She was very, very lively and quite animated and speaking with her hands.
‘In other lessons she was more reserved and quiet.
‘Alice Ashton had an Evian bottle with orange juice. I noticed she was regularly taking swigs from the bottle.
‘I recall Alice Ashton asked the class to make the Macarena. She played music and we were not doing work.’
The teenager said Ashton ‘kept jumping up from her desk’ but became ‘irritated’ as the lesson went on.
The hearing was told one schoolboy was walking around the classroom ‘annoying’ people when Ashton told him to leave but ‘not to snitch’.
Pupil H said: ‘She began to swear at him. She put her middle finger two to three inches from his face and continued to swear at him.’
Another student said: ‘She got us to dance the Macarena and she did not care about the lesson anymore. She got some students dancing to the laptop and speakers and it spiralled out of control.’
Ashton did not attend the hearing or respond to the allegations.
The panel was told she had previously emailed the EWC to say she was no longer working as a teacher and had moved to England.
Presenting officer Lewis Harrison said Ashton had told an internal school inquiry that she did not swear or sing to the class.
But Mr Harrison said CCTV footage of the lesson was totally at odds with her denials.
He said: ‘It is totally untenable to suggest the music is being played as background music. The evidence is very clear that Miss Ashton did not remain at the front of the class. She invited pupils to dance.’
It was found proven that she appeared under the influence and/or smelt of alcohol whilst at work.
She was struck off the teaching register indefinitely but may reapply in two years.
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