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An ex grammar school teacher has been banned from the classroom for life over an eight-month fling with a male sixth-former behind her husband’s back – 14 years ago.
Keeley Dean, 44, a geography teacher who was teaching at Oakwood Park Grammar School, Maidstone, had the affair with the pupil in 2008 and 2009, but the relationship was not revealed until the pupil – now married – reported it in 2020.
A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) disciplinary panel has found Ms Dean guilty of meeting the boy at his home, kissing him, having sex with him on numerous occasions and at one time staying in a hotel with him.
Ms Dean denied all allegations but the panel found evidence and ruled that the teacher’s actions were sexually motivated.
They said the pupil had told them that he finally decided to report the allegations as ‘keeping them a secret had been eating away at him’.
It was said that the geography teacher had seduced the teenager over dinner on the couch in his family’s living room while his parents were away at a Christmas work party.
Keeley Dean was said to be 30 and teaching at Oakwood Park Grammar School, Maidstone, when she started a sexual relationship with one of her students
Teaching watchdogs also heard that Ms Dean was aged 30 and the student had been enrolled at the school for six years when she emailed him in August 2008 to ask how he had got on in his AS exams.
Over the next few months they exchanged more emails and chatted in the classroom at Oakwood Park Grammar School in Maidstone.
Then in October, Ms Dean asked the student to go to the cinema with him and they exchanged mobile numbers.
Alan Wells, who chaired the Teaching Regulation Agency hearing on November 10, said: ‘Pupil A explained that he considered the relationship to be platonic at the time.
‘However, they decided to go to the cinema further away because Ms Dean was married and they did not want anyone to question that.’
The former pupil stated that it ‘did not cross his mind’ at the time that what they were doing was wrong and he enjoyed speaking with Ms Dean.
In December 2008, the pupil invited Ms Dean to his home whilst his parents were away and they had sex for the first time.
Mr Wells said: ‘Pupil A’s parents were away on his father’s Christmas work do.
‘Pupil A explained that he invited Ms Dean to his house for the first time because he was there alone.
‘Ms Dean came to Pupil A’s house for dinner and he recalled that she went to the toilet and when she came back she sat on the sofa next to him, grabbed his hand and said ”what are we doing to do about this”.
‘Pupil A explained that he then leant in and kissed Ms Dean and they then had sex for the first time.’
From January onwards, Pupil A and Ms Dean met up after school for sex at her house ‘two or three times a week’, after which she would drop him off at the bus stop.
The panel was told the teen considered her to be his girlfriend but they did not become ‘official’ because she was married.
‘There was an understanding that they would keep the relationship a secret,’ said Mr Wells.
In March, Pupil A and Ms Dean spent a night together in a hotel and went on a day drip together.
The student said he ended the relationship in June or July 2009 because his friends were suspicious and he ‘did not want to lie anymore’.
However, they apparently met up for sex again the following Halloween night after he started university and texted her that he was lonely.
In 2019, the former student was about to get married and was thinking about starting a family – and decided to report a ‘secret that had been eating away at him’, the misconduct panel heard.
In April 2020, he contacted the school’s headteacher via LinkedIn, was seen the same day and subsequently revealed what had happened.
Safeguarding officers were alerted and in July 2020, Ms Dean, now 44, was confronted about the allegations.
She said she was shocked but was unable to provide any reason for why the former pupil would say such a thing.
Ms Dean, who had taught at the school since 2001, claimed her former pupil had fabricated the allegations because he was ‘infatuated’ with her.
But former classmates told teaching watchdogs they were suspicious of the pupil’s relationship with Ms Dean.
They had spotted his car outside her home when he said he was meeting his ‘older girlfriend called Laura’.
The boy told teaching watchdogs he had made up ‘the fake girlfriend’ and named her after Ms Dean’s middle initial of L.
The pupil’s mum was also suspicious after spotting her son get out of a car while she was walking her dog and dumping a used condom in a bin.
Banning Ms Dean from the profession for life, Alan Meyrick, for the Education Secretary, underlined: ‘The panel noted Ms Dean admitted that she was aware that it was inappropriate to have an intimate relationship with a pupil.
‘In my judgement, the apparent lack of full insight means that there is some risk of the repetition of this behaviour and this puts at risk the future wellbeing of pupils.’
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