A primary school teacher has been dismissed after she taught her pupils TikTok dances, an employment tribunal heard.
The teacher began her role at West Grantham Church of England Primary Academy in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in September 2019. After the summer break, it was revealed that Miss Rogers had been engaging in "borderline unprofessional" communication with one of her students and the student's mother via Dojo, a digital platform utilised by the school. Among the numerous messages exchanged, Miss Rogers sent a picture of her nails to the pupil and telling her mother, including "Bless her, I just love her" and "Send her my love".
At her disciplinary hearing, Miss Rogers acknowledged that while she knew children were active on apps like TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram, she had advised them that creating social media videos at school was "not appropriate". She leveraged her background as a dance teacher to show them the correct way to perform a dance they had seen on TikTok, recording it on the school's iPad.
Despite this, she failed to record the pupils' engagement with TikTok as a safeguarding issue, even though she was aware that the legal age for its use is 13. The list of allegations against her included that teachers were 'encouraging pupils to watch Newsround, which regularly featured articles relating to TikTok'.