The 38-year-old Wendover, Buckinghamshire resident Kandice Barber received a six-year, two-month prison sentence.
On the advice of the Teaching Regulation Agency, the Secretary of State for Education has now banned her from practicing her profession. (TRA)
Her “callous and selfish disregard for her pupil’s well-being” was the panel’s conclusion.
According to the report, “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 call any witnesses or show up for the hearing.
She referred to the hearing as a “waste of time” in her response to the notice of proceedings.
She stated: “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 further asserted that she was not and had never been a teacher, saying that her only responsibility at the school was to act as a cover supervisor.
After looking into those claims, the TRA discovered “on occasion significant” evidence that Barber had been teaching.
The jury determined that her “conduct was so egregious and harmful as to be fundamentally incompatible with her being allowed to teach in future” .
Aylesbury Crown Court heard in January 2021 that in September 2018, Barber added herself to the victim’s Snapchat account.
Within a week, messages with the unnamed boy started to become sexualized.
Later, she invited the victim to meet her, and they had sex in a private field.
Later, in an attempt to prevent evidence from being discovered, Barber instructed the adolescent to erase all messages and block her on Snapchat.
The victim stated in a statement that “poorer-than-expected GCSE results” were the result of the stress and anxiety surrounding the legal case.
Barber was convicted of encouraging or causing a minor to participate in sexual activity.
She was acquitted on two additional charges of the identical offense.
Barber was also given two additional sentences to run concurrently with her primary sentence: a 10-month sentence for sexual communication and a 16-month sentence for allowing a minor to witness sexual activity by a person who had betrayed their trust.
