A TEACHER who let her pupils listen to their iPods during lessons has been banned from the classroom.
Suzanne Harwood was found guilty of a series of charges that amounted to serious professional incompetence, including conducting many classes that left pupils "confused".
The teacher dismissed growing pupil, parent and staff concerns over her ability to teach as "perceptions" and refused to acknowledge any need for improvement.
Ms Harwood, who taught English at Hazlehead Academy, in Aberdeen, told one parent "I don't have time to help her" after being confronted during a heated parents' evening at the school in October 2009.
She also regularly lost control of her classes, allowed high noise levels from pupils and failed to manage pupils' behaviour effectively.
The decision by the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) brings to seven the total number of teachers struck off for incompetence in Scotland since legislation was introduced five years ago to make this possible.
The GTCS was attacked earlier this year for taking too long to tackle competence cases after it emerged it had taken four years to ban a member of school staff who it later admitted "simply could not teach".
Concerns over Ms Harwood were first raised in October 2009 by the school's principal teacher of English when she was said to have "walked along the corridor on five separate occasions" to bring pupils from her class who were not behaving.
During one observed lesson in 2010, Ms Harwood is said to have handed out a disciplinary measure to a pupil who had his hand up looking for help, and to another who was trying to close a window.
But she had failed to dish one out to a pupil who had shouted an "inappropriate comment".
On one occasion the disgraced teacher even let her pupils "listen to their iPods and/or MP3 players in class in direct contravention of school rules".
Competence procedures against Ms Harwood began in February 2010, and she was suspended from the high school on June 29, 2010.
Ms Harwood handed in her resignation the following day.
The former English teacher failed to appear in front of a GTCS disciplinary hearing in Edinburgh on Monday.
But, after hearing evidence from the school's head teacher Alison Murison, and three other principal teachers, the body decided to strike Ms Harwood's name from the teaching register with immediate effect.
The witnesses told the GTCS panel of the "unduly high level of complaints" against Ms Harwood, of staff meetings where she was "confrontational and condescending" and of her rudeness to a fellow teacher which left pupils who witnessed the incident "shocked".
The GTCS panel stated: "The nature of the incompetence contained within the charges amounts to serious professional incompetence.
"The committee took into account the overwhelming evidence and the subsequent support and guidance offered to her and her consistent refusal to engage with that support ... Public confidence in teachers and the teaching profession would be undermined if the respondent were not removed from the register."
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