The High Court has confirmed a Teaching Council decision removing teacher Joanne Clarke from the register and preventing her from applying for restoration for five years.
Mr Justice David Barniville, President of the High Court, held that there was no good reason to overturn the sanction imposed by a panel of the Teaching Council’s Disciplinary Committee.
The case arose from a complaint made in May 2019 by a school principal. The disciplinary allegations concerned Snapchat communications between Ms Clarke and a pupil she had taught in fifth and sixth year, a sexual encounter in August 2018 after he had sat his Leaving Certificate, and a romantic relationship during that summer.
Following hearings held between June 2025 and January 2026, the panel found all four allegations proven beyond reasonable doubt and concluded that they amounted to professional misconduct and breaches of the teaching profession’s code of conduct.
A significant part of the panel’s reasoning concerned evidence given during the inquiry. Ms Clarke and the former pupil initially denied that they had remained in an ongoing relationship. After another teacher provided information to the Teaching Council, the inquiry was reopened. Ms Clarke then accepted that she and the former pupil had been in a relationship since late 2019 or early 2020.
The panel found that both had lied to it and that Ms Clarke had deliberately sought to conceal the relationship. It treated her dishonesty, lack of insight, abuse of trust and deliberate conduct as aggravating factors.
Mitigating factors included her previously blemish-free teaching career, the absence of evidence of later misconduct, the fact that the pupil was 18 when the relationship began, and that their relationship had become long-standing.
The panel initially considered a seven-year exclusion but reduced it to five years. Mr Justice Barniville found that sanction proportionate and within the range reasonably open to a professional disciplinary body. He therefore confirmed the removal and the five-year period of ineligibility, and also granted the Teaching Council permission to communicate the order to relevant teaching bodies in Britain and Northern Ireland.