Legal, moral, ethical – a lesson from The Archers.

If you’re an Archers fan on BBC Radio 4 (and I’m not, but I have to listen because my wife insists…) you’ll know that the lead storyline at the moment is the relationship between 18-year old ‘just left sixth-form and about to go to uni’ Lily Pargetter, and her 40-odd year old teacher, Russ.

Gasp! Shock! Horror! What? Are you sure this is an Archers’ storyline?

Oh, yes. I told you, I have to listen to it every night in silence. My wife bans me from uttering a word for the fifteen minutes it’s on the radio…

That is shocking!

I know. I’ve told her I should be allowed to eat at least…

No, I mean, it’s a shocking storyline.

Do you think so?

Yes! Appalling!

There was a time when this kind of thing was not particularly shocking – in the ‘good old days… when I was a lad… at school in the 60’s and 70’s’.  While I wouldn’t say relationships between teachers and school-students were common in those days, they were certainly not unheard of.

Really?

Yes. There was a strong suspicion of one at my own school when I was a sixth-former in the early seventies, though nobody knew for certain. The parties involved – a female teacher and a sixth form ‘boy’ (though he was a pretty big ‘boy’) were very discreet and nobody thought it anyone else’s business to inquire.

I can’t believe that!

If you think I’m joking, I can point to the fact that the former (and first) head of Ofsted, the late Sir Chris Woodhead, once began a relationship with one of his sixth form students. It lasted over a decade and both he and the woman involved defended it long after it ended.

Shocking! That kind of thing is not still going on, is it?

Well, probably… though these days sexual relationships between teachers and students at the same school are deemed explicitly unprofessional and therefore unethical – ‘teachers must observe appropriate professional boundaries’ booms the 2012 Teachers’ Standards – that means they will result in summary dismissal. Such relationships are also now deemed ‘catastrophic breaches of trust’ and were even made illegal by the 2003 Sexual Offences Act if the student is under 18-years-old.

So what’s happening in The Archers? Do tell!

In every episode, we hear poor Elizabeth Pargetter agonising over whether she can report her daughter’s teacher… to someone… anyone! for the way her daughter has been manipulated by the mature charms of her child’s silky-voiced teacher. The scriptwriters have kept up the ambiguity well by keeping us guessing about what are the exact circumstances of the relationship. We’ve had no explicit sex scenes or anything…

I should hope not!

But it leaves the nation – or at least the millions who listen – including my wife, of course, asking the questions – every weekday for 15 minutes twice a day and again for an hour and a quarter every Sunday morning during the Omnibus Edition. Is it illegal? Why doesn’t Lily’s mother just go to the police?

Isn’t it? Why doesn’t she?

Well, that would be silly, it would ruin the drama…

Be serious and tell me!

Well… it would be illegal if there had been a sexual relationship between Russ and Lily – a teacher and a student at the same school if she hadn’t reached her eighteenth birthday when it first happened. But Lily has now left the school and is no longer the subject of her teacher’s ‘position of trust’.

Does that make a difference?

Well, yes, legally – in that the police would have to establish that a sexual relationship began while Lily was still a student at the school, and under eighteen. Without clear evidence – and The Archers scriptwriters have cleverly kept us in the dark about exactly when the sex started – we don’t know if a crime has been committed.

But isn’t it still considered unprofessional? Couldn’t Russ get the sack?

Yes, it is and yes, he could. He could even be barred from the teaching register by a disciplinary panel at the Teaching Regulation Agency in Coventry, just up the road from Ambridge…

So why don’t they get on and do it?

Hold your horses! A complaint has to be made first and then a referral, either by the employer – that’s the school or the sixth-form college.  Or by the parent. Evidence would have to be established that an inappropriate relationship began while Lily was still a student at the school. She didn’t have to be in any one of Russ’s classes, just being at the same school will-do for being in ‘breach of trust’.

But the poor little innocent girl has been groomed!

Actually, the storyline is quite explicit about Lily’s own agency in the relationship – a clever little ploy by The Archers scriptwriters – as she is clearly a willing participant in a consensual relationship. In fact, she’s totally besotted with him…

Creep that he is!

And she has clearly been active in driving the relationship. She’s even invited him to move into a flat with her when she goes to Manchester University next week.

Does that matter? Hasn’t she been a victim of his grooming?

Again, it’s an interestingly ambiguous case, isn’t it? She is eighteen now – but does anyone know when her eighteenth birthday was? Though she was a subject of her teacher’s position of trust while at the school, she has left it now and is no longer.

But it’s disgusting!

You might find it disgusting – morally – that a teacher is having sex with an 18-year-old ex-student but it’s not illegal. Now that she’s left the school – ethically, it’s a grey area.

Really?

Yes, and if Lily and Russ had been at separate schools there wouldn’t even be a case to answer. A relationship – even a sexual relationship – between a teacher and a school student who are at separate schools is considered neither illegal (as long as the student is over 16 of course) nor even a professional breach of trust.

I’m sorry, but that’s disgraceful.

You may think so. Again, that’s your morality. It’s not a matter for the law with whom you have consensual sex once they’re over the legal age of consent and if the student is at another school, it’s not a breach of a teacher’s professional code of ethics either.  It’s a private matter.

Not for Russ and Lily… they’re on the radio every night!

Alan Newland worked as a teacher, teacher-trainer and headteacher in London for over 20 years and then for more than a decade with the DfE and the General Teaching Council for England. He now lectures on teaching professionalism and runs the award-winning social media network newteacherstalk. You can follow him on Twitter at @newteacherstalk and invite him for a talk. His book “Working in Teaching” (Crimson Publishing) was published in March 2014.

Watch one of Alan’s sessions on professional values and ethics in teaching…