Helen Carter 

Teaching council drop Miss Rusty case

Relief for Leonora Rustamova as the General Teaching Council drops the case against her
  
  


The General Teaching Council has dropped its case against Leonora Rustamova, it has emerged this week.

It said there was no case to answer against her. Rustamova said it has given her confidence to take her appeal against unfair dismissal, which will be heard by an employment tribunal at a later date.

Although she had previously felt very cynical about the justice system, she added, the GTC decision has made her feel positive again.

The popular teacher was sacked from Calder High School in West Yorkshire, in May 2009, despite being praised for the work she had completed with a small group of disaffected students, writing chapters of a novel for them, which were read out each week if they had behaved well.

Despite it being a fictional account, the book rather inevitably contained passages about drugs, smoking and truancy - as these were elements of the characters' lives that the students could identify with.

But when the book was inadvertently loaded onto a self-publishing site (but not downloaded by anyone) she was dismissed from her teaching job for reckless disregard for confidentiality. A campaign began to get the popular teacher reinstated, pupil demonstrations were held outside the school and a Facebook group was set up.

The parents and the five boys support Miss Rusty - as she is widely known - and continue to do so.

In May 2011, an employment tribunal rejected her claim for unfair dismissal by a majority of two to one. This has now been overturned at appeal and a separate hearing will consider her appeal for unfair dismissal.

Stop! Don't Read This tells the story of five boys who break into school to delete CCTV footage as it shows them misbehaving. During the break-in they find a gang hiding drugs and tell the police. It has been published by Bluemoose Books in Hebden Bridge.

 

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