Page 30 Daily Mail, Friday, August 30, 2019
Teaching Regulation Agency
heard how sixth-formers at Rend-
comb, in Cirencester, Gloucester-
shire, raised complaints about
the teacher.
Mbanga, who previously held
an unblemished 18-year record,
admitted inappropriate conduct
but denied acting with ‘devious
or malicious intent’.
His representative Elizabeth
Michaelson told the hearing: ‘His
biggest regret with respect to
this entire situation is that hisactions or comments, while har-
bouring no deviant or malicious
intent, may have been misinter-
preted by the very people he is
dedicated to serving.’
The panel, sitting in Coventry,
heard Mbanga admitted making
inappropriate comments, includ-
ing telling girls performing Army-
style crawls ‘to stop advertising’.
Mbanga also admitted ‘light-
heartedly’ telling a girl who had
answered a question correctly:
‘You’re not just a pretty face.’Another pupil was left ‘embar-
rassed’ when he said to her: ‘Good
morning, squat queen.’
He claimed the comment was
intended as a compliment.
Mbanga, who worked at the 250-
pupil school from 2014 until resign-
ing in April last year, also admitted
making unnecessary physical con-
tact with female pupils.
The hearing was told how he sat
on one schoolgirl’s lap in a compu-
ter room in February 2018.
The girl – known as Pupil A – said
she felt unable to tell Mbanga to get
up ‘because he was a teacher’.
Panel chairman Jean Carter said:
‘Two male students who had also
been present in the computer roomreportedly seemed shocked about
Mr Mbanga’s behaviour and consid-
ered the incident to be “weird”.
‘Pupil A felt quite upset and dis-
tressed about the incident – so
much so that she had nightmares
about it and she felt afraid of seeing
Mr Mbanga around the school.’
The teacher was also found to
have held pupils by their waists
during lessons, with one girl alleging
he had asked her to ‘straddle’ him
as he demonstrated an exercise.
Mbanga claimed that the physical
contact was how he was taught to
teach PE.
Mrs Carter accepted there was no
sexual motivation, but noted that
pupils described Mbanga as a ‘tac-
tile teacher who often came very
close to pupils and who did not
seem to understand personal space’.On one occasion he covered a girl’s
mouth and pinched her nose to
demonstrate the respiratory system
without asking permission.
Mrs Carter said the incident left
the girl – known as Pupil B – ‘angry,
uncomfortable and upset’.
Mbanga was suspended last
March by Rendcomb, which teaches
boys and girls aged three to 18.
The panel said his behaviour fell
short of the standards expected of
teachers and amounted to unac-
ceptable professional conduct.
However, they held back from rec-
ommending a teaching ban after
hearing of his exemplary record,
which also includes work as a youth
and women’s coach with England
Rugby. Their ruling, published this
week, said a ban would ‘deprive the
public of [Mbanga’s] contribution
to the profession’.
Mrs Carter said Mbanga had made
‘errors of judgment, which he has
fully admitted’, but said his behav-
iour was ‘not sufficiently serious to
bring the profession into disrepute’.ing that the ‘stigma’ around HPV
needs to be tackled. Another mis-
understanding highlighted by the
survey is that 42 per cent of women
believe they do not need to be
screened for cervical cancer if they
have been vaccinated.
While the NHS says the vaccine
protects against around 70 per
cent of cervical cancers, it does
not eradicate the risk completely.
Just over a fifth of almost 1,500
female respondents had no idea
how HPV, which is passed on
through sexual contact, is trans-
mitted and 52 per cent didn’t know
that both sexes can be infected.
Currently only girls are given a
jab for HPV – but from September,
the Government will roll out vac-
cinations for boys in a bid to wipe
out cervical cancer.
Most people will get some type
of HPV in their life. While most of
the time the group of viruses do
not cause problems, some types
can cause genital warts or abnor-
mal changes in cells that can
sometimes turn into cancer.Half wrongly think
monogamy keeps
you safe from HPV
NEARLY half of women wrongly
believe they are not at risk from
the leading cause of cervical can-
cer if they are in a long-term rela-
tionship, a survey has found.
The YouGov poll discovered that
while almost all cervical cancer
cases are caused by human papillo-
mavirus, 48 per cent think they are
not vulnerable if they are settled in
a monogamous partnership.
However, as symptoms can
remain dormant for years and
both men and women can be rein-
fected several times in their lives,
being in a stable couple does not
remove the risk.
The survey also found that 17 per
cent of respondents – and more
than a quarter of those over 55 –
believe promiscuity is the main risk
factor for cervical cancer, while
around 7 per cent think that if their
partner receives an HPV diagnosis
they have been unfaithful.
Vicki Bokor Ingram, of Roche Diag-
nostics UK & Ireland, a pharmaceu-
tical company which commissioned
the survey, described the misun-
derstandings as ‘dangerous’, add-Daily Mail ReporterStop advertising!
Daily Mail Reporter
A PRIVATE school teacher
told girls to ‘stop advertis-
ing’ as they crawled on the
floor with their bottoms in
the air during Army-style
PE drills.
One pupil said she had night-
mares after William Mbanga,
42, sat on her lap in a class-
room, a tribunal heard.
Mbanga, the sports director at
£35,000-a-year Rendcomb Col-
lege, was found guilty of unac-
ceptable behaviour by a discipli-
nary panel.
However, he was spared a teach-
ing ban after the panel ruled this
would ‘deprive the public’. The
‘Had nightmares
about him’‘Inappropriate’: William MbangaWhat private school teacher told girl
pupils as they crawled on all fours in PE