A teacher has been struck off for two years after mocking pupils for "dressing like Eastern European prostitutes and Kardashian clones". Alexander Price, 43, was found guilty of professional misconduct for his anonymous blog about the annual prom at Denbigh High School in north Wales. A misconduct hearing was told his comments offended parents, pupils and staff. Mr Price denied his blogs amounted to unacceptable professional conduct.
The former design and technology teacher said he wrote the gossip blogs as a "cathartic" exercise while working at the school and tried to make them "colourful and entertaining". But the panel ruled the posts were "inappropriate, offensive, or derogatory".
In his blog "The Provoked Pedagogue", Mr Price wrote about life working at the high school in Denbigh, north Wales. Derogatory comments In one article titled "The Problem With Prom", he called the event "a shallow, vacuous affair, about nothing more than who has spent the most on looking nice." He wrote that the girls often ended up looking like a cross between "Eastern European prostitutes" and "Kardashian clones" and said boys at the bash "snorted coke". He also mocked pupils and their parents for making so much effort for the school prom by spending sums they could not afford on gowns and make-up. Referring to poorly applied fake tans, he wrote "the literacy was so poor they can't read the instructions". Mr Price referred to "overweight girls being shoehorned into gowns and paraded through the town like cattle". He said the "proms mean more to them than GCSEs". He also wrote derogatory comments about his boss Dr Paul Evans, who became head teacher in 2018.
Chairman Steve Powell said the comments "were critical, they were disrespectful, they were likely to cause offence to any pupil or parent who came across the article". "It was particularly concerning that a focus on these comments and the article as a whole was on families from poor backgrounds in an unnecessary and unwarranted way," he added. Mr Price admitted writing the blogs but denied they amount to unacceptable professional conduct. He said the panel had not taken the blogs in the proper context and that many of the extracts they read aloud had the opposite point of the articles as a whole.
Mr Price's union representative, Colin Adkins of NASUWT, said the ruling was "chilling in that it has inhibited freedom of speech". In a statement to the panel, Mr Price said: "I find it ridiculous you say you have considered these comments in their entirety because you blatantly haven't." Mr Price has now been handed a prohibition order banning him from teaching. The hearing in Cardiff was told he can reapply to join the register after a two-year period.
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