Teacher banned after slapping pupil who laughed at classmate who couldn’t answer question
A teacher at Farnborough was forbidden to teach an indefinitely after laughing at a classmate who could not answer a question, after giving a “hard slap” to a student.
A behavioral panel was guilty of unacceptable professional behavior of 35 -year -old Bernard Aquilina, a computer science teacher at Cove Secondary School in Hampshire. He was expelled from school in May 2024 and now teaching in England has been banned.
The student said in a statement, another student, “He said he was chosen to answer because he did not pay attention. I laughed for fighting. Mr. Aquilina came to me, applauded, ‘well done’ he said. Then slapped me on his cheek.”
The panel received news from eight students who have largely made consistent expressions.
A student said: “I saw Mr. Aquilina approaching the student and said to him: ‘If you are disrespectful, I can do it.’ The student replied: ‘I just did it wrong’… Mr. Aquilina slapped her left hand on the left cheek.
Notes of the CCTV images given to the panel also supported the students’ accounts.
“The panel thought that Mr. Aquilina, albeit limited, showed some regret for his actions, he did not show any idea about his behavior or did not interact with the seriousness of his actions,” he said. “There was no evidence that Mr. Aquilina made an extraordinary contribution to teaching.”
Marc Cavey, the decision -maker of the case, said: “In my judgments, the lack of evidence that Mr. Aquilina has developed a complete idea of the behavior of this means that this behavior is the risk of recurrence, and this imposes students’ future prosperity.”
The incident occurred on February 5, 2024, and Mr. Aquilina was later rejected from school after an investigation and disciplinary hearing in May 2024. He had been teaching at school since September 2020.
It is forbidden to teach indefinitely and cannot teach at any school, at the sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or in the UK. In September 2029, he may apply to the forbidden order to be put aside.
The panel said that his behavior was a criminal offense and violated Mr. Aquilina’s obligation to observe the appropriate limits against students and the obligation to observe appropriate boundaries.
“Mr. Aquilina’s actions were fundamentally incompatible with being a teacher, and therefore the panel thought that the ban was both proportional and appropriate,” he said.
