A veteran teacher once described as “very popular” has been banned from the classroom after having a sexual relationship with a pupil.
Andrew Brook, 61, a longstanding teacher at Queen Elizabeth High School in Northumberland, developed an “inappropriate relationship” with a pupil between March 2019 and August 2020, and subsequently for six months after she left the school.
The teenager described feeling like she could not say no to the then-56-year-old father as he frequently drove her to a remote car park to have sex in the back of his van, while she was in sixth form.
Despite the girl’s attempts to end the relationship, Brook convinced her to carry on the relationship into her first term at university, where he visited her despite the country being in a national lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.
She said the burden of having to lie about the relationship, an order by Brook, left her feeling estranged from her family and friends for over a year.
“Looking back at the relationship, I believe there was a lot of manipulation by Mr Brook,” she told the investigating panel.
“He was older and in a position of authority. I felt as though I could not say no to him in the relationship because of the position her was in. He had a lot of influence over me – he could have probably told me to do anything and I would have done it.”
The panel issued an indefinite prohibition order against Brook after they found the teacher showed “complete lack of insight and remorse” for his behaviour, as well as downplaying the impact his actions had on the girl.
In a written response to the panel in February 2024, Brook accused the investigation of engaging in “moral policing” outside of its remit, claiming the girl was not manipulated but “knew what she wanted”.
The Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) found his lack of remorse, as well as his “attempt to minimise the impact of his behaviour of Pupil A”, as “evidence of a real risk of repetition”.
The relationship began in early 2019 after Brook asked Pupil A to sit on his lap during a coach trip. A few weeks later, he sent a message wishing her luck for her A-Level exam.
By the summer, the pair were messaging frequently. Pupil A said the messages were friendly in nature.
But by December, the pair were meeting up at least once a week. They would meet just outside town after school. She said the meetings became “quite intimate”.
The following month, Brook picked the pupil up from work in his van, drove them down country roads into a remote car park and told her he had strong feelings for her. She said she knew the comments were “weird” but she felt “flattered”.
A few weeks later, he took her to a car park again and kissed her multiple times. Pupil A said she initially felt “conflicted and shocked” by Brook’s advances.
From March, they started having sex in the back of his van. Pupil A said they would “park up, put the back seats down, pull the curtains round, then he would tell me to lie down and take my clothes off and we would have sex”. He then began to tell her he loved her, as well as buying her cans of alcohol.
After Pupil A left for university, Brook began visiting her. During these visits, which were during a national lockdown, he would buy her alcohol, they would drink together and allegedly smoke marijuana, and they would sleep together.
Pupil A described the relationship at that point as “sexual” in nature. The pair would discuss politics, human rights and his longtime passion for Tibetan sovereignty.
Pupil A said that by that point, she “felt like a large part of the relationship was about sex for him”. It eventually ended between February and April 2021.
The prohibition order stops Brook teaching in any classroom in England.
