A former teacher has been banned from returning to the profession after she exchanged thousands of messages with a 15-year-old pupil and met up with him on several occasions.

It was also revealed that the teenager had sent the teacher an explicit image of himself as well as a message containing pornography.

Rebecca Whitehurst, a former languages teacher at Wellacre Academy in Urmston, was cleared of all charges of sexual relations with a pupil in July 2022 after a jury at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court found her teenage accuser had faked incriminating WhatsApp messages and lied about sexual encounters.

But now, three years on, the 49-year-old has been given a ban from teaching over the same incident.

A panel assembled by the government’s Teaching Regulation Agency ruled in September that while innocent and initially well-intentioned, the parts of the relationship between Ms Whitehurst and the pupil that were agreed to be true amounted to serious professional misconduct. 

The panel found that the mother-of-two, from Lymm, had shared her personal phone number with the pupil, exchanged messages, met him outside of school, received gifts from him, received an explicit image of the pupil and on one occasion received pornographic images from him. 

In a report published this month, the panel decision maker, Sarah Buxcey, said: ‘The panel was concerned about the nature and extent of the communication between Ms Whitehurst and Pupil A. 

‘The evidence included almost 1,000 pages of messages exchanged between Ms Whitehurst and Pupil A over a few days in August 2019. The language and tone of these messages was suggestive of a deeply personal relationship between them which was wholly inappropriate between a teacher and a pupil.’

The misconduct hearing heard how Ms Whitehurst notified the school that she had been communicating with Pupil A via their personal mobile phones and over social media on September 17, 2019.

She explained that she had obtained his phone number on a school trip and disclosed that he had sent her inappropriate or indecent images of himself.

She said she had met him a couple of times outside school and then confirmed this had happened on eight occasions.

On three consecutive days in August 2019, Ms Whitehurst and Pupil A had exchanged a number of messages on social media, including messages in which he expressed suicidal thoughts. 

She did not report those messages to the school or any external safeguarding authority.

The panel issued an indefinite ban on Ms Whitehurst working in the teaching profession – meaning she cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.

But she will be able to apply for her prohibition order to be reviewed after five years.

Ms Buxcey continued: ‘The panel considered that Ms Whitehurst’s conduct could potentially damage the public’s perception of a teacher, given the seriousness of her conduct and the risk of harm it presented to a vulnerable child. 

‘The panel was satisfied that Ms Whitehurst did not target Pupil A for attention at the outset and that her breach of professional boundaries started from a desire to help him.

‘Ms Whitehurst was aware that Pupil A had particular vulnerabilities before exchanging personal contact details and entering into a relationship with him that breached professional boundaries. 

‘The conduct took place over a considerable period of time between March and September 2019. It was not an isolated incident.

‘The panel considered that over this period there were lots of opportunities for Ms Whitehurst to step away from the situation and seek appropriate help.

‘Even accepting Ms Whitehurst’s account that she did not request indecent images from Pupil A and that she deleted them immediately after she received them, she did not report receiving them or take any effective action to prevent Pupil A from continuing to send them to her.

‘Ms Whitehurst was fully trained in safeguarding and would have been very well aware of the risks of not following. 

‘This resulted in significant risk of harm to Pupil A, and to Ms Whitehurst and others around her. This harm materialised in that Pupil A exhibited signs of distress as a result of the events flowing from her breach of professional boundaries.

‘For these reasons, the panel was satisfied that the conduct of Mrs Whitehurst amounted to misconduct of a serious nature which fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession.’