A TEACHER at a Suffolk school has been suspended for a year after forming an “inappropriate relationship” with a student, the General Teaching Council said.

Alexis Bailey, a teacher at Thurston Community College, near Bury St Edmunds, was banned from teaching for 12 months after her relationship with the student between April and June, 2008. A General Teaching Council hearing ruled Ms Bailey had also failed to maintain a professional distance from students by meeting them socially outside school.

She accepted them as friends on her Facebook page and gave them her private e-mail address and mobile phone number, it was claimed.

The panel heard Ms Bailey had discussed her private life with current students, texted pupils from her mobile phone and talked to them in internet chatrooms about “non-educational matters”.

The teacher had also given pupils lifts home unaccompanied. The professional conduct committee found her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct and made a disciplinary order against Ms Bailey, suspending her from teaching for the next 12 months.

No-one at the college was available for comment last night.