Sacked from job and banned from teaching for two years.
A teacher in the UK has been let go from her job and told she cannot teach again for two years after allowing her students, some of them as young as 15, to post topless for photographs as part of a school art project.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, Emma Wright, 41, explains she was indeed sacked from Huxlow Science College, near Northampton, where she had been teaching since 2004, but defended her actions, saying the project was “art”.
“I feel there is a deep injustice about it, but I am not going to appeal because I no longer wish to teach,” the secondary school teacher told the newspaper.
“I have written to my MP, the union and the Education Minister regarding this. I am a good person. I am not the person they are making out to be.”
She added:
“I really feel very strongly about it. I am really quite upset about it. It is a position I never thought I would be in. Those students were wonderful students. I have no bad feelings towards those students at all.”
“Highly inappropriate’
According to The Sun, the UK’s Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) found that Mrs Wright had invited a photographer who specialised in “suggestive poses” to talk to students, which was “highly inappropriate”.
As well as topless images, some of the photographs reportedly included teens “posing with their hand inside their underwear”.
However, Ms Wright argues that the TRA does not have an understanding of what constitutes art.
“The TRA has not taken that into account and they have not got an understanding of art in education, which is the basis of my letter to the TRA and MP.”
She explains further:
“I am hoping the local community are as shocked as I am, and as sad and angry. They know me. I have taught in that school for a long time.”
The TRA conducted an investigation into the matter and Ms Wright told a panel that in her opinion the artist’s work was not sexual in nature, but she admitted that, with hindsight, she should have told the pupils their photographs were not appropriate.
