Will my teacher friend lose her job?

[thelightofthenkew]

Primary school teacher going to court in the new year for driving while disqualified, they were banned for 6 months due to accumulating too many points on their licence.

They will be convicted as they are pleading guilty, will this mean they will get the sack from their job? Anyone know a similar situation happen before?

Asking for a friend.

If you have been disqualified - you have been told you aren’t fit to drive by the DVLA. A court has taken into consideration you reasons why you were speeding, drinking and driving and decided you are lethal on the road.
you are therefore not fit to drive, you have no insurance and have been told no ….

so you get in a car knowing should you hit a car, house, person that you aren’t allowed to by the authorities, that if you do any damage you aren’t insured and that you aren’t fit to drive a car.

you get in a car and this time you kill someone or hit someone or again speeding or tail getting or thinking the rules don’t apply to you because you think you are brilliant and a wonderful driver - bang my boyfriend is dead - hit by someone speeding and unable to understand braking distances having been disqualified twice - he’s dead on a zebra crossing tossed across the road like a rag doll - his neck broken, his life over, no children for him, no career, no grandchildren, no brother for his sister or son for his parents.

Professional conduct law for teachers has changed you should declare convictions of anyone you live with. Getting disqualified- to drive whilst disqualified I don’t know anyone part from the above mentioned person or someone who needs serious professional help for say a drug addiction that would do that - breaking law and then breaking a court judgement - that’s a double whammy.

A teacher should lose their job. End of. The question was should a teacher lose their job. Yes they should - so should a lawyer, doctor, nurses - you sign up to a professional code of conduct

Will not get sack

Seems to depend which way the wind is blowing with TRA hearings at the minute

Very unpredictable

I know (friend lost contact with) who regularly drove while a bit drunk, stoned even and was lucky she was never stopped. She was a popular primary supply teacher.

Was she regularly a bit drunk, or even stoned, while in charge of a class of children?

Personally I think the TRA is a bit of a shower, and a discredit to the profession - I often read their judgements and there seems to be little in the way of consistency of thought or reasoning, and outcomes are very unpredictable, sometimes overly draconian, sometimes overly lenient.

Part of the reason is that they are something we as teachers are not signed up to, we have no say or ownership of the TRA, its a government quango that does its own thing. It should operate more along the lines of the BMA, where doctors belong to the professional body, sign up to its rules etc..

Well, i've been a teacher in mainstream secondary for 18 years, I've never signed up to any code of professional ethics (more recent recruits maybe?)- its pinned to the wall in the staffroom (teachers standards, I've never read it, life's to short!), but I don't belong to any organisation whereby I've signed up to it.

Whereas a layer is a member of the Law Society and agrees to their rules, doctor the BMA etc. they get benefits for being a member too. Its not quite the same set up.

Why is the sentence not any harsher than drunk driving then? And why does drunk driving normally entail a longer ban than a DWD conviction? How are you judging seriousness here?

And LOL at the idea that a lawyer would lose their job. Absolutely loads of them get caught drink driving and a fair few DWD too. And they actually do have to abide by an ethics code. As I said above DWD is not a dishonesty offence, the main ones the legal profession is concerned about.

In schools, you can't employ anyone who is specifically barred from working with children, but you can make a judgement about whether to employ people with criminal records. Eg I once employed a superb TA who was banned due to drunk driving. She had driven away from her abusive partner in fear during an argument and was ashamed and remorseful. We took the view it was a one-off event in extreme circumstances and not representative of her normal levels of judgement.

I would not want to employ someone who repeatedly showed they felt the law didn't apply to them, but it would depend on the context and the overall quality of their work as to whether they kept their job if they were already in post.