A TEACHER has been struck off after the aunt of a schoolgirl went undercover in a bid to investigate his relationship with her niece.

Callum Mustard, 25, was a teacher at Shaftesbury Church of England Primary School.

A professional conduct panel of the National College for Teaching and Leadership this week heard that he admitted failing to maintain appropriate professional standards and/or boundaries by engaging in inappropriate communication on social media and accepting friend request offers from pupils on social media.

No criminal charges were brought against Mr Mustard and the NCT panel found that his conduct was not sexually motivated.

The girl’s mother made a complaint to the police on July 16 2015, after her sister, the girl’s aunt, spent three hours exchanging messages with Mr Mustard on social media. The aunt had been posing as her niece.

A report setting out the evidence heard by the panel states that, prior to this, Mr Mustard had accepted friend requests from the girl and her brother, and had permission from their mother to do so.

But the panel also heard that the mother’s own relationship with Mr Mustard was described as ‘flirtatious’ and that the pair had exchanged private messages and photographs.

The report stated: “The panel considered the fact that Witness A (the mother) had provided consent in no way alleviated the inappropriateness of his conduct. Mr Mustard did not appear to understand that it is the teacher’s duty to maintain professional standards no matter what a parent may say.”

The panel discussed whether Mr Mustard’s actions were sexually motivated – an allegation the teacher ‘robustly denied’.

Regarding the aunt, the report stated: “She accepted that the motivation behind the messages she sent to Mr Mustard, in the course of her posing as the girl, was to seek to lure him into sending a reply of a sexual nature.

“However she admitted that no response, which could reasonably and properly be described as sexual, was sent by Mr Mustard in response to any of her messages.

“[Her] evidence was that whilst she remained concerned at the conclusion of the exchange, she was relieved that the content of the messages was not as inappropriate as she had feared they could have been.”

The panel recommended Mr Mustard be banned from teaching for two years, after which he can apply for the prohibition order to be set aside. The recommendation was accepted by Alan Meyrick, acting on behalf of the secretary of state.

In reaching its decision, the panel said there was a ‘strong public interest’ argument in banning Mr Mustard from teaching.

The report stated: “Public confidence in the profession could be seriously weakened if conduct such as that found against Mr Mustard were not treated with the utmost seriousness.”