[2024] UKUT 171 (AAC)

RR’s account

RR is an Afghan National and a devout Muslim. He had taught English for 10 years in Afghanistan. He is married and came to the United Kingdom in November 2021.

In 2022, he was appointed to teach English as a foreign language to overseas students on a residential summer course. He was allocated to a class of students who were studying at the highest level, to whom he taught English and Drama. Teaching began at 8am and ended at 3pm. It was unusual to teach two different topics to the same class. KK was a member of the class; she was 16 years old and is Greek.

The first day of RR’s appointment was Monday 27 June 2022. He taught his class on 27 and 28 June. There were no classes on 29 June, as the students were on a trip to London. He taught again on 30 June. That evening KK made a complaint about him. This led to him being suspended and called for a disciplinary hearing on the morning of 1 July. After that meeting, he resigned.

This is RR’s account of what happened.

He began the first class with what he called a misjudged attempt at humour by comparing the students with celebrities that they resembled. He likened KK to a Bollywood actress called Karina Kapoor. He also set up a session in which the students would interview each other. They worked in pairs with a script of questions. The students were arranged in a U-shape around the room, with RR’s desk to one side. As there were an odd number of students, he asked KK to move places and paired with her to ensure that all the students had equal time to ask and answer questions. He sat facing KK in the midst of the other students, taking her through the interview while monitoring what the others were doing. At the end of the interview, she discovered that he was from Afghanistan. There is, he told us, often bad relations between Greeks and Afghans. Certainly, KK became hostile. Commenting on illegal migration and criminal activities by Afghan refugees in Greece.

In the course of the interview session, he had learned that KK wanted to come to the United Kingdom to study law. At the end of the session, he told her that she might want to apply for scholarships and offered to check them before she submitted them. He suggested that she send them by email. She said she did not use email, but she would send them by phone. He had a new phone and did not know the number by heart, so he asked for her number. He rang it to check he had the correct number and to give her a missed call to use when she wanted to send him something to check. He terminated the call as soon as it connected. Her phone did not ring and he did not enter her into his contact list. RR saw nothing wrong in this at the time, as students and teachers in Afghanistan communicate by WhatsApp.

After the first session, KK and two of the other students were unco-operative and disruptive, making critical comments about RR and his accent, spending time on their phones, and distracting the other students. The disruption was worst in the Drama class, with KK more or less taking control and leaving RR on the side-lines. She asked for a new tutor and RR told her that she needed to go to the office and ask, as she was entitled to a different teacher for each topic.