Teacher who starred in TV show Educating Yorkshire is banned from the classroom for life after having sex with two former pupils

Neil Giffin, 35, had relationships while at Bishop Heber High School
Had sex with two girls aged over 18 in 2007 and 2008 after they graduated
In 2012 he also admitted messaging another three Bishop Heber pupils
Spoke of fantasies, including cross dressing, with vulnerable 17-year-old
Wrote messages after moving to Thornhill Community Academy, where Channel 4 show Educating Yorkshire was filmed

A teacher who appeared in the TV documentary Educating Yorkshire has been banned from the classroom after having sex with two former pupils.

Neil Giffin, 35, began a relationship with an 18-year-old girl following his school’s end of term ball, which continued after she went to university.

The fling ended when Giffin ‘rekindled a relationship’ with another ex-pupil of the same school, whom he met on a night out.The secondary school teacher also used fake names to send messages to three other former pupils on social media, a professional conduct panel heard.

His ‘inappropriate’ contact with one 17-year-old girl was deemed to be ‘sexually motivated’ and included chats about cross-dressing. He told the vulnerable teenager about a sexual fantasy which involved her ‘on top of him’ in school uniform.All the girls he targeted were pupils or ex-pupils of Bishop Heber High School in Cheshire, where he taught history before moving in 2012 to Thornhill Community Academy near Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, which was featured in the award-winning Channel 4 series.

An investigation was launched in January last year after a report that Giffin was communicating in an inappropriate way with the 17-year-old, named only as Pupil A, from his former school.

He was suspended from his job as head of humanities at Thornhill and resigned three months later.Details of his behaviour and indefinite teaching ban were revealed by the National College for Teaching and Leadership in a summary of the disciplinary panel’s findings.

Giffin admitted allegations concerning five pupils between 2007 and 2012.

The panel was told how he sent messages to three pupils at the Cheshire school on Facebook after moving to his new job. He hid his identity by using fake names – Guy Andre, Chelsea Smith, Frank Shepard and Alan Shepard. Only Pupil A responded, and they began chatting over social media.

Giffin soon admitted his real identity to his former student, who had special educational needs. Through text and Whats-App messages to the girl, he ‘raised a question about what students thought of cross-dressing’, the panel heard.

He said he was jealous of her and other girls in her class who ‘looked sexy in tights’ because he wanted to wear them himself. Giffin sent messages discussing sexual fantasies, including imagining Pupil A in her school uniform and smoking a cigarette ‘on top of him’. The girl told police she had begun to trust him.Giffin told investigators he regarded the messages as ‘silly conversations’ and that he had been drinking when he sent some of them.

But inquiries also uncovered an ‘inappropriate relationship’ with a Year 13 pupil several years earlier.

Giffin said it started during the summer holidays when he saw her as a ‘former pupil’. The panel heard they saw each other for about six months and became ‘intimate’ when the girl went to university. Another sexual relationship with an ex-pupil from the same school was not found to be inappropriate, as the girl was not at Bishop Heber while Giffin taught there.

They had ‘met on a night out in Chester’ rather than at school, the panel was told.

Banning Giffin for life from teaching in any school or children’s home in England, the panel concluded that he had ‘acted dishonestly and breached his position of trust’.

Giffin had claimed he used the fake Facebook accounts to ‘escape’ from stress and financial problems.

He was not available for comment yesterday.