Teacher ‘ snooped on emails in holiday row’
A PRIMARY school teacher began snooping on her colleagues’ emails after a row over a cancelled holiday, a court has heard.
Donna- Maria Thomas, 45, is accused of illegally accessing up to six of her colleagues’ email accounts to see if they were talking about her.
Claims have been made that the experienced teacher was acting as a whistleblower amid allegations of “inconsistencies” in the children’s Sats tests.
At the time of the alleged offences she was a teacher at Aldingbourne Primary School near Chichester.
She appeared at Portsmouth Crown Court yesterday where she denied securing unauthorised access to computer material.
Prosecutor Paul Fairley said “hacking is probably a step too far” to describe the accusations.
They are said to have taken place between December 2018 and January 2019.
Instead he said Thomas had been “going into other people’s emails seeing if there was anything being written about her, seeing if there was perhaps anything she could use”.
He told socially distanced jurors at the crown court that a “feud” between Ms Thomas and head teacher Liz Webster had started over a “misunderstanding”.
He said: “Holiday had been booked by Ms Thomas.”
Sour
Even though flights had been booked Ms Webster realised a mistake had been made and felt she could not authorise the holiday.
Mr Fairley added: “From that falling out with Ms Webster, it appears the relationship very much soured.”
Thomas complained about Ms Webster to the chair of the school governors on various occasions.
Mr Fairely said: “There were allegations made that might be termed whistleblowing in terms of possible inconsistencies of the ways that the Key Stage One testing process was being administered.”
The court heard that this related to Year 2 Sats tests.
The situation deteriorated to such a degree that at one stage Ms Thomas was communicating with people only by email and text message, the court heard.
Defence barrister Daniel Darnbrough questioned the school- contracted IT technician, Simon Williams, over whether password security at the school was “poor”.
Fellow Aldingbourne teacher Natasha Maysey answered questions on whether there was a “culture” of password sharing among teachers.
Mr Darnbrough asked her: “Somebody asked for a password in relation to schoolwork that was then given over?”
She said that this was the case.
The trial continues.