A TEACHER has been banned from the classroom after lying to bosses of a Prestwich school about being sacked from her previous job.

Terasa Pukiello was suspended from her role as deputy headteacher at Cloughside College, a school for young patients of Prestwich Hospital, last year when bosses spotted a paperwork glitch.

Ms Pukiello had filled in a form claiming she earned £12,793 more than she actually did in her last role and that she left for a “new challenge” – when the truth was that she had been sacked for gross misconduct after she forged a letter to a mortgage firm.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) this week held a disciplinary hearing into Ms Pukiello’s conduct and, in a report out today, banned her from working as a teacher indefinitely.

A Bury Local Education Authority spokesman said: “When concerns about this teacher’s credentials came to light, we immediately suspended her in accordance with standard procedure.

“We carried out an investigation and Ms Pukiello resigned during the course of this.

“It is a serious matter when teachers do not tell the truth in job applications, and following our investigation we referred the case to the NCTL and the teacher has now been prohibited from teaching.

“It is up to individual schools whether to use an external recruiting agency, and it would appear in this case that the teacher’s credentials were not checked with the necessary rigour.

“We will be reminding our schools that they must ensure that job applications are thoroughly verified before any appointments are made in accordance with our guidance.”

According to the report, Ms Pukiello began work at St Wilfred’s Academy in September 2007.

She was not a qualified teacher and was offered the role of assistant headteacher on the condition that she became a qualified teacher within a year.

However, she failed to do that and was demoted to unqualified teacher status.

Ms Pukiello became a qualified teacher in March 2011 and she taught English at the school on a salary of £31,552.

Things started to go wrong in March 2013 when a mortgage provider contacted the school to query a reference letter – but nobody from the school had any recollection of sending it.

The letter stated that Ms Pukiello’s salary was £33,660 and that she was advancing onto the leadership scale – both lies – and the signature had been forged.

After an internal investigation at the school in April 2013, Ms Pukiello was sacked for gross misconduct in connection with the forged letter.

The NCTL panel said it believes she was the one who created the letter and Ms Pukiello did not dispute it. 

On September 9, 2013, Ms Pukiello became temporary deputy headteacher at Cloughside College and applied later that month to take up the role permanently.

On her application form, she stated that she had worked as an ‘assistant head for inclusion’ in her previous job, that she earned £44,525 there and that she left “to undertake new challenges.”

Assuming those statements to be true, the college employed Ms Pukiello as deputy headteacher in October 2013 – but trouble emerged the following March.

Senior staff called St Wilfred’s Academy to check if Ms Pukiello’s application form was accurate, another discrepancy emerged.

It turned out that Ms Pukiello had written a letter on St Wilfred’s Academy-headed paper to say that she had never suffered health problems while working at the academy, when in reality, she had been off work on eight separate occasions through illness.

The NCTL panel concluded that Ms Pukiello had acted dishonestly and she admitted everything the panel accused her of.

She also told the panel that she “admitted that her actions amount to unacceptable professional conduct and/or conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute.”

The report adds: “The panel is satisfied that Ms Pukiello’s actions amount to misconduct of a serious nature, falling significantly short of the standard of behaviour expected of a teacher.

“In making this judgement, the panel determined that, on a number of occasions over an extended period of time and in a number of ways, Ms Pukiello was dishonest.

“Further, the panel determined that the dishonesty was serious because it was in each instance for personal gain.

“The panel finds that Ms Pukiello’s actions amount to both unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute given that the allegations relate to conduct both in and out of school.

“Members of the general public rightly expect teachers to act with integrity.”

Ms Pukiello can challenge the prohibition order in five years.

She was unavailable for comment.