Teacher who failed his pupils is struck off

A MATHS teacher has been struck off after admitting serious professional incompetence.

Christopher Nurney has been banned from the classroom after being found guilty of failing to plan and carry out coherent teaching programmes, maintaining an adequate level of order and discipline in his classes and of failing to follow school assessment procedures over a five-year period.

Nurney, who failed to attend a General Teaching Council for Scotland disciplinary hearing in Edinburgh yesterday, was struck from the teaching register after a panel found his teaching methods “must have adversely affected the education of many children”.

Nurney, who was employed as a teacher by Dumfries and Galloway Council, accepted the incompetence charges against him and claimed ill health was the root cause of his bad teaching performance.

The GTCS panel heard Nurney had resigned from his position after being called to appear in front of an internal school disciplinary hearing to assess his competence in June 2009.

The maths teacher had been issued with a final written warning just days earlier after his lessons had been deemed to show “no clear evidence of planning”.

His failure to control his classes led to “high noise levels” with “regular low-level” disturbances being said to be a common occurrence.

And throughout the period between October 2005 and June 2010, Nurney also failed to maintain an adequate standard of report writing and marking of pupils’ work despite intensive support from colleagues.

The GTCS panel said: “The sub-committee decided to direct the registrar to remove the respondent’s name from the register, and should be prohibited from applying for restoration to the register for a period of 12 months.”