A teacher found having sex in a car with a pupil has been placed on a community payback order and will be supervised by social workers for six months.

Eppie Sprung Dawson, 27, was described as a gifted and dedicated staff member of the secondary school where she worked in Dumfries before her career and marriage were wrecked by the fling shortly before Christmas.

Details of her sentence became clear when Sprung Dawson reappeared for sentence at Dumfries Sheriff Court yes- terday after earlier pleading guilty to breaching her position of trust.

The pair were caught together by police officers in a lay-by last December near the town.

Sprung Dawson had already been told she would not be jailed for the offence, but yesterday also learned she would not be given an unpaid work order within the community.

A payback order can be specifically tailored to each offender based on the nature of the crime and the underlying issues fuelling it, and may be organised so as to stop them reoffending in the future.

An example may include a programme to address an offender's behaviour, a move indicated by the sheriff in the case at an earlier hearing.

Sprung Dawson, who taught the 17-year-old pupil English at the school, will be on the sex offenders register as long as the order.

At an earlier hearing, the court heard that between the ages of 13 and 18, Sprung Dawson was the victim of an assault by a man 29 years her senior.

Her solicitor David Finnie said that in the meantime she will continue a course in counselling that she has already started.

Sheriff George Jamieson commented that he would not impose an unpaid work order as he felt the environment would be wholly unsuitable for her.

She had been placed on the sex offenders register on her first appearance but was told this would now last the length of the order.

Sprung Dawson had been married just over three years to another teacher, Ranald Dawson, the son of the late Lord Dawson, the former solicitor general and judge in the Scottish Supreme courts.

Sprung Dawson had given in to temptation, a move that wrecked both her marriage and her career, the court heard at an earlier hearing.

The court was told she had been a popular teacher at the school and had been the teenager's English teacher for four years.

Sprung Dawson will appear again at Dumfries Sheriff Court for a review of the order in two months' time.

She was suspended when the incident came to light and has since left the school.

A Dumfries and Galloway Council spokeman said: "We are not making any statement. It would not be appropriate. She is no longer an employee."