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Union backs saucy ad teacher

17/ 1/2008

A UNION has backed a teacher suspended from her job over a raunchy internet advert made during her student days.

Sarah Green, who teaches at exclusive Stockport Grammar school, was sent home this week after pupils stumbled across a graphic advert in which she stars as a seductive secretary.

The 25-year-old English teacher had carried out a number of acting jobs while a student at Manchester Metropolitan University.

The National Union of Teachers said that her past activities would not affect her abilities to teach pupils.

The four-minute film was created to promote a brand of protective workwear and shows three contractors being seduced by a number of attractive women.

Although Ms Green was fully-clothed throughout, it was too explicit for television but proved a hit on the internet with tens of thousands of viewers on Youtube and other sites.

It was produced by Manchester-based ad agency CBJWT in 2004. Ms Green was commissioned through a Cheshire-based casting agency to take part in the advert.

She began working at Stockport Grammar, her first job in teaching, in autumn 2006 and is understood to be popular with pupils and fellow staff.

The £7,000-a-year private school is one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1487.

The video is understood to have recently come to light after being circulated among pupils. Ms Green now faces a disciplinary hearing to decide whether she can keep her job.

Headteacher Andrew Chicken wrote to parents this week to confirm he was investigating her past.

But NUT regional organiser Avis Gilmore said she should be given leeway. She said: "Suspension should be only when teachers are suspected of having done something malicious and harmful. A lot of people during their student days can make mistakes.

"This seems like a momentary lapse of judgement and one that was made before she even qualified or started working as a teacher. If this person is suspended then there is the potential for being dismissed and it could be the end of her teaching career. If every single person was dismissed for a moment of foolishness in their past, no one would have a job."

She said that a number of teachers in the Greater Manchester area had sought help because of cyber bullying, with derogatory comments and sometimes even fake websites put on the internet by pupils.