A PE teacher has been banned from teaching after she carried out an insurance scam in an attempt to cash in on £50,000. Dipti Patel reported a "contrived burglary" to her insurance company in an effort to make an "entirely fraudulent" claim.
Patel, who had been teaching at Manchester Academy, in Moss Side, at the time was convicted at St Albans Crown Court in September 2020. She was handed a nine-month suspended prison sentence and was ordered to carry out 120 hours of unpaid work and 10 days of rehabilitation activity.
She pleaded guilty to the crime, as she did not know of the contrived burglary. She said her role in the fraud was "exaggerating the claim", which she regretted, reports The MEN.
But 37-year-old Patel made the situation worse when she failed to tell the school the full details of the criminal charges against her. Although she disclosed the guilty plea to her school, she was found to have acted dishonestly by the school board during the process.
When she was due to appear in court she failed to tell the school the real reason for taking leave, instead claiming she needed the time off work to take her child to a medical appointment. She also did not tell the school she was being interviewed under police caution in October 2019 and that she had appeared at a magistrates' court in August 2020.
When Patel signed annual safeguarding documentation knowing she was facing criminal charges, she failed to disclose them to the school. Manchester Academy suspended her as soon it became aware. A spokesperson for Manchester Academy said: “As soon as we were made aware of this, the individual was suspended and now no longer works at the school.”
A Teaching Regulation Agency report found she had acted "dishonestly" throughout the situation. It said: “Mrs Patel’s dishonest actions were planned and happened on multiple occasions in providing continued dishonest representations about the burglary to the insurance company, the insurer’s investigators and the police.
“Mrs Patel’s culpability was further amplified by her persistent dishonesty in concealing this information from the Academy, until the last possible moment. These factors meant when considering Mrs Patel’s actions on the spectrum of dishonesty, it could only be at the higher end of that spectrum.”
The panel ruled that an "ordinary decent person would consider her actions as dishonest". It added that her failure to notify her employer was "namely done to hide any knowledge of the potential conviction, her shame and her worries about losing her job and ongoing ability to support her family".
Mrs Patel had previously worked in a London school for 10 years before moving to Bolton. She made the move due to "personal family issues" connected to an armed robbery in the family's previous home. The fraudulent claim was made in connection with the same address.
Patel was convicted at St Albans Crown Court, in September 2020, of the offence of ‘Dishonestly make false representation to make gain for self/another or cause loss to other/expose other to risk’.
Mrs Patel can apply for the prohibition order to be reviewed, but not until May 23, 2025, at the earliest. However, this is not an automatic right and if she does apply, a panel will meet to consider whether the prohibition order should be set aside. Without a successful application, Mrs Patel remains banned from teaching indefinitely.
