Girls’ school sacks ‘touchy feely’ engineering teacher

THE assistant head at a girls’ school who was too ‘touchy-feely’ and boasted about the size of his manhood has been sacked but can remain in teaching.

Head of engineering Roderick Dyson, 62, referred to his ‘big thing’ when discussing the design of urinals.

His lessons were filled with sexual innuendo, a disciplinary panel was told.

Dyson, who is married, put his hands on a pupil’s hips and tapped a girl’s bottom with the back of his hand, it heard. He regularly joked about the way nuts and bolts fitted together like male and female parts.

He was warned after he held spherical moulds to his chest to simulate breasts and was accused of zooming in on the body parts of a female teacher whose photograph he displayed on a whiteboard.

Dyson was dismissed for misconduct by Skipton Girls’ High School in North Yorkshire, where he had worked for ten years, in January 2016. A National College of Teaching and Leadership professional conduct panel ruled he had brought the profession into disrepute and been guilty of unacceptable professional conduct, but decided not to ban him from teaching.

It heard that Dyson thought his comments about his manhood were ‘funny’ and he made gestures to draw attention to his sexual organs. One pupil said he touched the ‘thigh side of her bottom with the back of his hand with quick taps’ to get her to move. Dyson accepted being ‘tactile and enthusiastic’ but denied tapping the girl’s bottom.

However, the panel backed the pupil and said ‘any deliberate physical contact on the bottom or thigh area of a pupil is inappropriate’. But it ruled that Dyson had a long and unblemished career and a ban from teaching would be disproportionate.