Criminal teacher employed by London school banned

Sydney Russell School was contacted by the LDRS but did not provide a response

A teacher at an east London school has been banned from the profession for life for misleading a school about details of his past convictions, including battery and fraud.

Robert Brathwaite, who was hired by Sydney Russell School in Dagenham in 2016, went on to commit sexual assault and have sex with a teaching assistant in an unlocked classroom, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A professional conduct panel heard the school was aware of many of his convictions, but when applying for the teaching role he intentionally provided misleading and inaccurate information about some of them.

Sydney Russell School was contacted by the LDRS but did not provide a response.

During the hearings, which Brathwaite did not attend, the panel was shown court copies of the certificates for each conviction, which included driving without a licence or insurance and possession of criminal property in 2005, battery in 2007, and fraud in 2009.

The panel also heard that while Brathwaite was employed as a teacher - but not during the actual course of teaching - he was convicted in 2019 of sexual assault of a female aged 13 years or over by penetration.

It was also told he had sex with a colleague in school on a number of occasions, and that anyone could have walked in and seen it as the classroom door did not lock.

Following a referral to the Teaching Regulations Agency (TRA) in 2017, a professional conduct panel took place from 17-20 September this year and a report detailing the findings and decision of the panel was released on 3 October.

Victim 'probably' a police officer

The panel concluded Brathwaite sometimes allowed his name to be recorded with an extra letter on some documents to act as a form of alias.

While applying for the job at the school, Brathwaite ticked a box which stated he had been convicted of one or more criminal offences and wrote down that he had been convicted twice in 2006 and once in 2009.

When asked about these, he later wrote down that the first conviction was in 2006, while the second was 2007 and the third took place in 2009, and the panel found he "entirely omitted" the conviction for possession of criminal property on his application form.

It also said he was misleading in his description of his conviction for battery because Brathwaite said he "had a fight... with someone who had crashed into my car" but the panel concluded the victim was, "on the balance of probabilities", a police officer.

'Escalating history of criminal activity'

Additionally, a presenting officer told the panel Brathwaite failed to use the word "fraud" when he provided details of his 2009 conviction for using a cloned credit card at Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street to buy two laptops costing more than £1,600.

The panel also had access to a police interview and court transcripts in which Brathwaite fully accepted on multiple occasions that he and another staff member, known only as Colleague A, had sex in his classroom at the school.

Brathwaite’s conduct amounted to misconduct of a serious nature which fell "significantly short" of the standards expected for the profession, the panel concluded.

Its report stated: “The panel concluded that public confidence in the professional would be affected by the knowledge that an individual with an escalating history of serious criminal activity was teaching children.”