Miss Rusty cleared by GTC and lands job in prison

The decision by the General Teaching Council means she can pick up her career as a schoolteacher.

But, she revealed to the Courier she is in no hurry to do rush back into mainstream teaching and is looking forward to starting work with prisoners.

She was sacked from Calder High School, Mytholmroyd, in 2009, for writing a racy book about her pupils and the incident hit the national headlines.

Through Swarthmore College, Leeds, where she works part-time, she will shortly start a project helping with literacy in prisons.

“That will be really interesting for me,” she said.

Ms Rustamova said the GTC decision cleared her of allegations she was a menace to young people.

A hearing date was set and adjourned late last year and a GTC committee has now decided the case won’t progress to a hearing.

She now hopes that will help her case when an employment tribunal reconvenes.

Ms Rustamova won an appeal against the tribunal findings and said the GTC decision strengthened her case.

“I feel very positive about that,” she said.

“There will be no new evidence but submissions from barristers for rejustification of a decision.”

Her case has dragged on for three years and she said it had left her with concerns about how schools were run.

“Headteachers and governors have too much power,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the GTC refused to elaborate: “We don’t make public any information about cases until the point at which there is to be a formal hearing, if the case proceeds to that stage,” she said.

Her book, “Stop! Don’t read this: The Story” was published last summer by Hebden Bridge based Bluemoose Books and has so far sold 2,000 copies.

Publisher Kevin Duffy said Ms Rustamova was an inspirational teacher and the GTC decision was good for her and bad for governors at Calder High.

He said reasons given for her sacking were based on GTC core ethics and it had cleared her.