Student-teacher relationships: Don't stand so close to me

The pupils are hormonal, the teachers may only be a few years older. No wonder the line gets crossed. The new film Notes on a Scandal tells the story of an affair. Teacher Steve McCormack says the cases that come to court are just the tip of the iceberg.

Chemistry isn't confined to the science labs at school. The sexual variety is in the air in every classroom and down every corridor. How could it be otherwise, given the proximity, day in day out, of hundreds of teenagers, each one a hormone volcano ready to erupt, and their teachers, many still in their early twenties?

So the tale of a woman teacher falling for, and then falling into bed with, a pupil at her London school, should not be dismissed as far-fetched. The story told in Zoë Heller's novel Notes on a Scandal, the film of which is released on Friday, might depict the extreme and relatively rare end of the spectrum. But there are cases like this, and less serious liaisons are commonplace.

With about 200,000 teachers working with millions of teenagers in thousands of schools, the law of averages alone suggests that, every so often, there'll be an attraction that goes beyond a mutual desire to deepen understanding of simultaneous equations.

For two years up to 2004, I taught in mixed comprehensives, and since then I have worked as a supply teacher in London. I've seen numerous examples of school situations becoming sexually charged, fuelled by the ambivalence in the teacher-pupil dynamic.

On the one hand, teachers are encouraged to develop relationships of honesty and trust with their pupils. Colleagues seen chatting with kids in the playground are admired by their peers for going the extra mile to build on the more formal classroom relationship. I remember playing rounders on a Spanish beach with a dozen or so teenagers in swimming costumes during a school trip to Barcelona, and subsequently enjoying a much closer relationship with them back at school.

Some teachers, male and female, use harmless flirting techniques to lighten the atmosphere in a classroom. I've complimented a girl on a new haircut, for example; female colleagues aren't above an eyelid flutter to enlist the help of strong boys to carry heavy books. This can help win round difficult teenagers. But it is just these situations that can provide "cover" for a teacher in danger of crossing that thin dividing line and becoming too close, or that can lead a confused and immature teenager into thinking the teacher is up for something more intimate.

Shortly after I started teaching, a popular and accomplished female colleague in her early twenties became aware that she was lighting the fire of a sixth-form boy she taught. He'd been making it obvious for some time that he had a soft spot for her.

Then, out of the blue, things escalated. In the middle of a lesson, while she was teaching from the blackboard, he walked to the front of the room and stroked her long blonde hair. The other pupils looked on open-mouthed, while the teacher took in the physical proximity and audacity of this love-struck, unbalanced teenager. "I just froze, and told him to sit down," she recalls. "It really freaked me out."

In the same school, a male friend, thirtyish and "fit" in the eyes of older girls, for a few weeks found himself in a similar predicament. He was targeted by one particularly attractive 16-year-old, who in dress and demeanour fitted exactly the teenage seductress stereotype. Then, during a maths lesson, she walked to the front of the class and sat on his lap as he sat at his desk. Having cast off her blazer, she sat there, Lolita-like, practised pout in place, effectively daring him to manhandle her off his knees. There was no easy way out. Doing nothing meant she might just stay put. But if he tried to move her, exactly where would he position his hands? Fortunately for him, she left of her own accord. No harm was done, everyone aware that he'd been ambushed.

With 3,500 secondary schools in the country, we can safely take it that these sort of scenes are played out pretty frequently. A teacher with a weakness or a predatory instinct might be tempted to cross the line. I know of two cases where this has happened. In the first, one man made the rash decision, after attending a school-leavers' prom, to go to a party back at a girl pupil's house. Before you could say General Teaching Council he was seen snogging in the corner with one of the girls who'd be turning up for lessons the previous term. It didn't go any further and he survived his moment of minor madness, but everyone who heard about it knew he'd been stupid.

His behaviour may not have brought him within the scope of the law, which, in 2003 was changed to criminalise sexual relationships between teachers and pupils under the age of 18. The other case I heard about, though, from a friend in the West Country, is unequivocally in the crime category. Here, a woman teacher in her mid-twenties became emotionally entangled with a 17-year-old boy. At first, eyebrows were raised by colleagues who saw the pair talking to each other more frequently than would have been expected. But their acute antennae soon picked up that the relationship was about to lurch into dangerous territory. The boy began visiting the woman at her home when she was alone in the evenings. The line had been crossed.

When it emerged the relationship had become sexual, it caused turmoil among the teachers. Everyone recognised the potential damage to the boy and yet no one took it further. The boy himself ended the affair and has since left for university. It is thought his parents have since found out, but that as the liaison had ended, they decided not to pursue matters further. So the teacher stayed in her job at the same school.

Research suggests this sort of scenario is more common than the odd high-profile case that makes it to court would suggest. Dr Pat Sikes, education lecturer at Sheffield University, has studied interviews between teachers and pupils over a 25-year period and estimates as many as 1,500 sexual relationships could be taking place every year. That would be one in every two or three schools. Controversially Sikes has written a paper arguing it is wrong always to cast students as victims when they are often the instigators of relationships. "Expressions of sexuality are a major currency in everyday school life exchanges. And nowhere more so than in the seductive nature and erotic charge that's often a characteristic of good teaching that provokes an exciting response."

Teaching unions usually get involved at the messy end of these affairs. A spokeswoman at the National Union of Teachers confirmed that, during the affair, teachers can lose their grip on reality. "They think they can get away with it," she says. "They don't realise how damaging what they're doing can be." She is adamant that there should never be a blurring of the line, however close the ages are between teacher and pupil. "Teachers know what the law is, and know they'll be endangering their career and getting a criminal record."