Teacher 'wrote Harry exam text'

PRINCE Harry’s former art teacher at Eton told a tribunal yesterday that she wrote the text to his AS-level project - something she considered "unethical and probably constituted cheating".

Sarah Forsyth, 30, said the prince was a "weak" pupil and that the head of the school’s art department, Ian Burke, had completed one of his paintings that later featured in the media.

Ms Forsyth said Mr Burke would occasionally do painting for the boys while he talked to them about betting or football - something the pupils encouraged by keeping him on his "pet subjects". She said he also worked on the pupils’ paintings in their absence - including Prince Harry’s work that appeared in newspapers.

In a statement to the tribunal, she said that in 2002, on the night before a moderator was due at the school to look at students’ AS-level work, she was asked by Mr Burke to prepare some lines of text to accompany images prepared by the prince.

Ms Forsyth said: "I assumed I had been asked to do this because Prince Harry was a weak student. I had been told some time before by Michael Wilcockson, who marked his entrance examination, that he had been ‘desperate’ to find points for which to award marks."

Ms Forsyth said she later saw the prince sitting beside Mr Burke at a computer with his file open and scissors next to them, apparently reading through a print-out of her text and deciding which bits should go where. She claimed that the prince thanked her for preparing the text, which was the only contact she had with him on the subject at the time.

However, facing dismissal from the school a year later, she secretly recorded a conversation with the prince on his way to his A-level art examination, in which she claims he confirmed he had written "about a sentence" of the text.

At the time of the incident, she did not think she could have told anyone else for fear of victimisation - she said she had not been aware that statutory protection against such victimisation existed.

She went on: "I have recently seen for the first time extracts of the written material which was submitted on Prince Harry’s behalf and can confirm that it was nearly all written by me."

Shown the prince’s AS-level project by her barrister, Robin Allen, QC, Ms Forsyth told the tribunal yesterday that she had written the text while seated at a computer.

Ms Forsyth was told in the summer of 2003 that her Eton contract was not being renewed, and she is claiming unfair dismissal at an employment tribunal in Reading, Berkshire.

Under cross-examination, she disputed that her contract had not been renewed because of the quality of her teaching.

She said: "I believe I was dismissed partly because Mr Burke wanted to give his girlfriend the job and also because of the Prince Harry mess. Also because, I think, well, I don’t know what reasons Mr Burke had, but I don’t think he wanted me in the department for reasons other than the teaching."

She later admitted that she had disclosed the fact that she had recorded the conversation with the prince after it was clear she would not be employed the following year.

She said the revelation had used up "any currency" she had with the headmaster. "Any goodwill which I might have had before in terms of a reference or, I don’t know, any goodwill, effectively went up in a puff of smoke at that point."

In a statement, Mr Burke denied Ms Forsyth’s claim about completing the prince’s work and that of another A-level student. He said: "This is a misrepresentation of a friendly atmosphere in which boys discussed their interests. I do not only speak to boys about betting and football. The suggestion that I finished these two pupils’ work is completely untrue."

The school also strenuously denied Ms Forsyth’s claim that she helped the prince to cheat, saying the exam board specifically encourages teachers to "assist pupils with technical vocabulary in the written explanations of their artwork".

The school maintains that Ms Forsyth did not sit alone at a computer and write out the text to the AS-level project, claiming three separate teachers saw her sitting with the prince working on his coursework journal.

Prince Harry, now 20, started officer training at Sandhurst military academy yesterday.

The tribunal continues.