By Helen Weathers
FOR a school which prides itself on the high quality of its pastoral care and commitment to the emotional, physical and sexual health of its pupils, it would be hard to imagine a more embarrassing scandal.
Award-winning Paignton Community College in Devon, lauded for its pioneering sexual health advice service for students, has found its nemesis in the form of its now disgraced English teacher, a 28-year- old married woman called Jo Gorman, herself once a star pupil at the college.
This week it emerged that Mrs Gorman had been sacked from the school following a disciplinary hearing, having been suspended last November over the ‘sexual touching’ of a 16-year-old male pupil for which she also received a police caution.
Photos of the pair were seemingly taken on mobile phones which reportedly rapidly spread after being sent to other pupils.
What a nightmare for the college which became the first school in the South West to be singled out by the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children as a ‘Listening School’ a status only achieved once a designated standard has been reached relating to four aspects of health education promoting the welfare of its pupils.
And what will the mandarins in the Department of Education think? For the college has been held up as a shining example to the rest of Britain after it set up its controversial Tic Tac centre, offering advice to students on all manner of issues including sexual health.
Indeed, the college’s own policy document on safeguarding children reads: ‘All staff believe that our school should provide a caring, positive, safe and stimulating environment that promotes the social, physical and moral development of the individual child.’ One member of staff, however, was clearly not singing from the same songsheet. Indeed, Jo Gorman’s actions, which have shocked and angered parents, might well have been stimulating but there was certainly nothing moral about them.
Coming hot on the heels of headlines last year about teenage pregnancies at the school ex-pupil Kizzy Neal fell pregnant at 13 and is now the 15-year-old mother of an eightmonth-old son, while pupil Charlotte Maddox became a teen mum at 13 almost two years ago it means parents are at their wits’ end.
One 43-year-old parent, whose 15-year-old daughter was taught by Mrs Gorman, said last night: ‘I feel absolutely disgusted at what’s happened. When my daughter came home and told me, I just couldn’t believe it.
What on earth was this teacher thinking of? ‘When I met her, she seemed the most normal person in the world. Not tarty, nothing over the top, just normal. That’s what makes it so hard to believe.
‘I was told the boy had managed to keep the back. A friend of the couple say that relationship secret but a friend of his found a compromising picture of Mrs Gorman on his phone and word got out.
‘What responsible teacher would allow this to happen? She’d only been married a year and her husband worked at the school, too. If it had been a male teacher sexually touching a female student, all hell would have broken loose, but it seems to me the whole episode has been smoothed over.
‘At least she’ll never be able to work with children again, but it’s outrageous. I feel so angry I’ve persuaded my daughter not to stay on in the sixth-form. She’s going to college instead. I’m not happy with the school, not happy at all.’ Last night Mrs Gorman and her husband Craig, 28, who works at the school as the head of the IT department, were not answering the door at their Pounds 200,000 seafront home. She is not expected to appeal against the result of the disciplinary hearing.
The former rising star, who won the college’s Linden Challenge Cup as its best A-level student 11 years ago, must be wondering how she allowed herself to throw away her career on a relationship with a teenage pupil, albeit a seemingly willing one.
Yesterday a car was on the drive of the Gormans’ home with a ‘Mum- to-be’ sticker in the back. A friend of the couple say that Mrs Gorman is due to give birth to her first baby in March.
The friend said: ‘They’ve been trying for a baby for a long time. Jo is very upset and angry over what’s happened. She said there was no sexual relationship with the pupil and that she was set up by a troublesome pupil because she was strict with the students.’ The caution means she had to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register and was added to the Department of Education blacklist, known as List 99. As for the state of her marriage, that remains unknown. The family of the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has asked for privacy.
While the college principal Jane English and all the other teachers were in the dark about what was going on between Mrs Gorman and the teenager, pupils last night revealed that it had been the talk of the school for months.
And the picture which emerged was of a young, newly married teacher who Gormans’ home with a ‘Mum-to-be’ sticker in
She smacked the bottom of a boy who winked at her ‘
despite her ‘prim and proper’ manner with parents was regarded by her pupils as ‘very flirtatious’ with the boys.
One 15-year-old female pupil who was in Mrs Gorman’s English class said: ‘She was the type of teacher who was very strict with the girls but favoured the boys. She was very giggly around them.
‘When the girls played up and were naughty, they’d be ordered from the class while the boys were sent out and allowed back in after just five minutes. None of the girls thought she was very pretty. We all thought she was plain and that no one would fancy her.
‘She used to try too hard. She was always trying to act younger than her years, to try and fit in with her pupils.
Well, the boys anyway.’ According to one male ex-pupil, now aged 18, Mrs Gorman once playfully patted a pupil’s bottom as he left the room an educational technique which can be found nowhere in the college’s many policy documents on safeguarding children.
The pupil, who was in Mrs Gorman’s English class for three years, said: ‘I was one of her favourites and we became quite close friends. It wasn’t like talking to a teacher, she was more of an equal.
‘She would ask me to stay behind after class and really praise me. She’d tell me I’d go far if I kept my head down and worked. She was quite flirtatious, although not in an over the top way.
‘A lot of the boys fancied her because although she wasn’t conventionally pretty, there was something about her. I remember once a boy in my class said something cheeky to her as he left class, winked at her and she came over and smacked his bottom.
‘Another time she gave me a cuddle, after I’d done something well. There wasn’t anything sexual about it, but I suppose, looking back, it’s not the kind of thing a teacher should do.’ He added that the teenager involved in ‘
the scandal with Mrs Gorman was considered a bit of a ‘geek’ by the other boys and had, in the past, been bullied.
‘Mrs Gorman liked to take the more vulnerable boys under her wing. When I heard what had happened I was surprised, but the more I thought about it, I wasn’t, really.
‘When I was there, I would say there was quite a bit of flirtation going in that school between pupils and teachers. Some of the girls had huge crushes on male teachers and as Mrs Gorman was one of the younger female teachers some of the boys fancied her.’ The boy Mrs Gorman threw her career away for was, according to various accounts, good-looking, outgoing and bright, with a girlfriend in the year below him. Pupils say he never bragged about his special relationship with his teacher and tried to keep it quiet.
But when Mrs Gorman appeared to take a shine to the boy, word got round pretty quickly.
‘Everyone thought it was a bit of a giggle because she didn’t seem the type. She was married as well.
Her husband worked in the IT department and he was really nice.
Quite good-looking and very helpful. He’s the one I feel sorry for,’ said one pupil.
The infatuation might have fizzled out without incident had, according to pupils, one of the boy’s friends not found pictures of Mrs Gorman on his phone. These apparently then spread like wildfire via mobile phone and internet and the secret was out.
And so Mrs Gorman’s career came to an abrupt end and it would appear that the scandal is the final straw for some parents, who are less than happy with the pastoral care on offer at Paignton Community College.
Those parents the Mail spoke to believe it embodies everything that is wrong about the current thinking on sex education in Britain’s secondary schools, encouraging an acceptance of sexual activity among pupils.
In 1998 Paignton a mixed sports college with 1,860 pupils set up the controversial Tic Tac (Teenage Information Centre Teenage Advice Centre) in a bungalow in its grounds, open each lunchtime and staffed by health professionals including GPs, nurses and youth workers.
This was the same year that the college sent out 700 letters to the parents of male pupils warning them of the dangers of hepatitis B after a local woman, drug addict Michelle Brindham, 22, who has since died, contracted the disease.
It had been discovered that several boys from the school had slept with her. It was reported that up to 15 boys at a time would queue up outside her flat for sex.
So perhaps the Tic Tac centre could be regarded as an enlightened response to the issue of under-age sex and how dangerous it can be.
There are now two such centres on each of the school’s two sites, providing confidential advice on all manner of subjects from bullying to homework worries, from alcohol and drugs to stress. And, of course, safe sex and contraception.
Despite its being held up as model of good practice to other schools in promoting sexual health awareness and described as exemplary by the Department for Education, some parents are dubious about the Tic Tac centre fearing it promotes sexual activity among under-age pupils.
One parent, who asked not to be named because her child is still at the school, said: ‘What the school should be saying to pupils is “you are too young to be having sex”.
But it seems to me the message they are receiving is “we know you are having sex so here are a few condoms”.
‘My daughter’s friend went to the Tic Tac centre because she was pregnant. She was under 16 and they arranged an abortion for her because she didn’t want to keep the baby. Her mother still doesn’t know to this day.
‘Other people may say that it is respecting the wishes and confidentiality of the child, but to me it’s unacceptable.’ And while the school’s Ofsted report, published last year, praises the Tic Tac initiative, underlining that it has won local and national recognition, it described the college’s provision for spiritual, moral, social and cultural development as merely ‘satisfactory’ with ‘opportunities for spiritual reflection less well developed’.
And what of those under-age mothers? Kizzy Neal’s parents, Kerry and Kevin Neal, who help their daughter bring up her son while she continues her studies at college, have been shocked by this latest and unwanted development in the school’s history.
Mrs Neal, who still has a 14-yearold son at the school, said: ‘A lot of parents are very angry and I’ve been told that some are threatening to take their children out and have written letters of complaint.
It seems to me that many of the pupils knew about this before any of the authorities.
‘I was shocked when I read about it in the papers because Mrs Gorman always seemed quite prim and proper, but when you speak to the kids you find out they’ve known about it for months.’ Mr Neal added: ‘It seems to me that the school preaches that the Tic Tac initiative is a model of excellence, but you need to look at what’s actually happening. I think it just encourages pupils, when they are still too young, to think that it’s OK to have sex.’ Paignton Community College principal Jane English said in a statement: ‘The college undertook its own inquiry under its grievance and disciplinary procedures.
‘The outcome of the investigation resulted in Mrs Gorman being dismissed from the college.’ She declined to comment further when contacted by the Mail yesterday.
No doubt Mrs Gorman’s pastoral care of her pupil is not the kind she would want to be repeated..
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