Teaching aide suspended for mocking pupil in video

A SCHOOL learning support worker has been banned from working in education for 12 months after she filmed herself “mocking”, hissing and gesturing at a young pupil and shared it on social media.

- ROBERT HARRIES

Lois Bennett was employed by Ysgol Y Graig Primary in Cefn-coed-y-cymmer, Merthyr Tydfil, to work with the child in the nursery class after glowing references from a teaching agency.

However, within just six days of starting her contract, on October 23, 2023, Bennett filmed the pupil and shared the video publicly.

Bennett filmed the child on her phone while she was alone with him on a “changing bed” in the school changing rooms, an Education Workforce Council Wales (EWC) fitness to practise hearing was told this week.

She held her phone up to film while she hissed at the pupil and gestured shouting: “What are you going to say? What are you going to say?,” the school's headteacher at the time, David Anstee, told the hearing.