A Chemistry teacher has been sacked after she allowed pupils to watch a cartoon in which Shrek has sex with an orphan. Claire Thompson used her school computer to share the pornographic clips in her classroom.
The video was watched pupils, aged either 16 or 17, at Queen Anne High School, Dunfermline, Fife.
Teaching staff were made aware of the incident when a pupil reported the clips to the Deputy Headteacher.
According to the General Teaching Council for Scotland, the depute head said: “They were worse than she expected. She was clear that they were inappropriate, sexual and paedophilic.”
When confronted, the deputy headteacher said Ms Thompson was “was defiant and confrontational, saying that it was the school’s fault, the previous teacher’s fault, the kids’ fault”.
One pupil who gave evidence at the hearing said the “Shrek video particularly stuck in her mind” and “other inappropriate videos of a sexual nature were also shown.”
The pupil also said Ms Thompson “seemed to think that they were funny” but she reported the incident.
The videos were shown “once a week” after the first clip was showed to the class, said the witness, who also gave evidence that a video about “German and Russian torture techniques” was also shown.
Queen Anne High School headmaster, Ruth McFarlane, told the GTCS the decision was taken to suspend Ms Thompson following an investigation.
Ms Thompson was also found to have been repeatedly left pupils unsupervised in the classroom, with one pupil telling the hearing she left the classroom for “as long as half an hour.”
