Teacher banned for life after lying about playing against Australia's rugby team and Oxbridge credentials
28 October 2022, 17:39
A teacher has been banned from the profession for life after posing as an international rugby player, a Cambridge scholar and an Oxford graduate.
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Paul Elliot, 53, was punished after he lied to get jobs in education.
But his fibbing unravelled after Yarm school commissioned a private detective agency to look into his past and an ex-England rugby captain said he did not remember him.
Elliott claimed that since 1988 he had been a visiting scholar at Cambridge and studied medicine at Oxford.
He also said he played rugby for Oxford and Wigan Warriors, and represented "North" against Australia during their 1988 tour of the UK, The Times reported, while there was no record of him playing rugby for the university and club sides.
But former England rugby captain Will Carling said he did not recall Elliott, who managed to land a job as head of religion and philosophy at Yarm School in North Yorkshire in 2018.
He was sacked the following year after the school brought in a private detective agency to probe his past, and then referred him to education watchdogs.
Elliott told a teaching panel he was taken to hospital before he started training as a doctor at Oxford and therefore he did not enrol.
In writing, he told the panel he did attend guest lectures but Michael O'Donohoe, for the Teaching Regulation Agency, said that was not the same as studying medicine full time at the top university.
Elliott also said he had not appeared in the match programme for the game with Australia because he had to take the identity of another player who had to withdraw.
But the panel found against him, with chairman Clive Ruddle saying he "demonstrated a pattern of dishonesty in his entire career".
Sarah Buxcey, on behalf of the education secretary, said the panel had been concerned by Elliott's "lack of insight and lack of remorse" and worried he would continue his dishonest conduct. She banned him from teaching for life.
