A PAEDOPHILE teacher who cheated his way to a top post at a school near York by hiding his sexual past has been struck off.

Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate north of York sacked Mohammed Afzal as its head of science when its management discovered why he had not told it about his previous employment at a Kent school.

A teaching tribunal heard he had left the earlier post after less than three months because girl pupils there had complained to their head about his behaviour towards them.

Following his dismissal from the North Yorkshire school he was jailed at Maidstone Crown Court for three years for indecent assault of a pupil at the Kent school.

The tribunal panel ordered that the 68-year-old chemistry teacher be struck off and banned permanently from teaching in any school, sixth form college, youth accommodation or children’s home.

It declared he had deliberately hidden details of his previous post from the North Yorkshire school and found “Dr Afzal’s actions to be calculated and motivated”. It declared him to have been “seriously dishonest” and lacking in integrity as well as committing the sexual crime.

The panel decided that “Dr Afzal’s behaviour has the potential to have a very serious negative impact on the public’s perception of the profession.”

The tribunal heard that Dr Afzal applied for the post of head of science at Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate in 2015. In his CV, he stated that he spent the academic year 1993-1994 on full time PhD research at Birbeck College University.

He didn’t include his job as a sixth-form chemistry teacher at a Kent school from September 1, 1993, nor that he had had to resign from it following allegations of sexual misconduct towards female students on November 23, 1993.

An internal investigation had recommended that he be sacked.

For five years, he hid his Maidstone past from the North Yorkshire school until he was arrested for the indecent assault by Kent police and released on bail in January 2020.

He then revealed the details of the Maidstone job to Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate’s principal, and why he had left it.

He was immediately suspended from the North Yorkshire post. Following a further meeting he was sacked from Queen Ethelburga’s Collegiate on January 21, 2020, and the Teaching Regulation Agency was informed.

On March 4, 2022, he was convicted of the indecent assault, having denied the offence, and was sentenced on May 6, 2022.

Dr Afzal did not attend the tribunal hearing. He sent  a written statement in which he admitted unacceptable professional conduct, conduct that may bring the professional into disrepute and conviction of a relevant offence.