Vevekanand Singh, 50, was employed at Hunters Hall Primary School when he was arrested on New Year’s Eve 2019 on suspicion of possessing an indecent image of a child.
It emerged that eight months earlier a friend from his home country of Guyana had sent him a distressing video on social media of a child being sexually abused.
Mr Singh replied “this look like one little child” but he failed to report the incident to the police, his school or to the social media website.
After Mr Singh was interviewed, Essex Police made a decision in April 2020 that no further action would be taken.
He then remained employed at the school until October 2020.
On December 19 last year a Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct panel made the decision to ban Mr Singh from the profession due to his failure to report the incident.
Mr Singh did not attend the misconduct hearing.
Mr Singh stated in his police interview that he was “extremely shocked and confused” when he received the image.
He said prior to this he and the acquaintance occasionally exchanged casual bits of news regarding Guyana.
Mr Singh explained that the video was “completely unsolicited” so his “instinctive reaction was to get rid of the image, so [he] resent it back to the person who had sent it”.
The misconduct panel dismissed Mr Singh’s claim that he believed sending it back to the original sender would delete the image.
In his interview Mr Singh admitted he should have informed the designated safeguarding lead at the school and could have informed the police, stating this was “a bad decision and a bad misjudgement”.
He claimed the messages later disappeared so he assumed the police or the social media site were already dealing with it.
Decision maker David Oakley said: “The panel noted that the allegations took place outside the education setting. There was no evidence before the panel that any pupils of the school were exposed to, or influenced by Mr Singh’s behaviour in a harmful way.
“However, the panel determined that Mr Singh’s failure to report an indecent image of a child was significant to his ability to fulfil his role as a teacher, given the importance placed on a teacher’s ability to identify and share information regarding a child’s safeguarding needs.”
He noted that Mr Singh had the opportunity to report his concerns at any point during the eight months before police got involved, but he chose not to.
Prior to this Mr Singh said he had an “unblemished record over many years as a teacher, a member of the community and as a parent”.
Mr Singh is banned from teaching indefinitely but will be able to apply for the ban to be set aside in five years.
