Buckinghamshire teacher Kandice Barber banned from teaching

A teacher who groomed a 15-year-old boy and had sex with him has been banned from the classroom indefinitely.

Kandice Barber, 38, of Wendover, Buckinghamshire, was sentenced to six years and two months in prison.

The Secretary of State for Education has now prohibited her from her profession on a recommendation from the Teaching Regulation Agency. (TRA)

The panel concluded she had a "callous and selfish disregard for her pupil's well-being".

The report said "public confidence in the profession would be seriously weakened if conduct, such as that found against Ms Barber, were not treated with the utmost seriousness when regulating the conduct of the profession".

Barber did not attend the hearing or call any witnesses.

In her response to the notice of proceedings, she called the hearing a "waste of time".

She wrote: "Unfortunately due to the conviction and sentence I will be on the Sex Offenders reg indefinately [sic] therefore will never be able to work in education and nor would I want to!"

She also claimed she was not, and never had been, a teacher and said her role in the school was just as a cover supervisor.

The TRA investigated those claims and found evidence Barber had been engaged in teaching work which was "on occasion significant".

The panel found her "conduct was so egregious and harmful as to be fundamentally incompatible with her being allowed to teach in future".

In January 2021, Aylesbury Crown Court heard Barber added herself to the victim's Snapchat account in September 2018.

Messages with the boy, who cannot be named, became sexualised within a week.

She later asked the victim to meet her, going to a private field before having sex with him.

Barber later told the teenager to delete all messages and block her on Snapchat in a bid to stop evidence being found.

In a statement from the victim he said the stress and anxiety of the legal case had caused "poorer-than-expected GCSE results".

Barber was found guilty of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

She was found not guilty of two further counts of the same offence.

Barber was also handed a 16-month sentence for causing a child under 16 to watch sexual activity by a person in breach of trust and a further 10-month sentence for sexual communication, to be served concurrently with her main sentence.

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