A teacher in East London forged medical documents and said she had to attend her brother’s funeral in order to justify her absence.
Dionne Bryan was a teacher for the incoming kindergarten class at Newham’s Portway Primary School, although she was often absent for extended periods of time in 2017 and 2018. Some of her explanations for being absent were found to be false, and the school launched an inquiry as a result. For example, her phone’s area code indicated that she was really in Kingston, Jamaica while she said she was in Florida or the United Kingdom, prompting the school to conclude that her assertions were false.
During the course of the investigation, the school discovered that she was not a qualified teacher. Â She also made up papers from Dysart Surgery in Bromley that said she needed time off work because of a procedure. Soon, though, more lies began to unravel. The ‘order of service’ she provided for the burial was for someone who had not died, disproving her claim that she was travelling to Florida for her brother’s funeral, which was the reason she had taken another spell off work. Another fabrication of Ms. Bryan’s was that she had escaped marital abuse and was hiding out in Birmingham with the help of the police.
The school fired Ms. Bryan in October 2018, and in November 2019, the TRA panel concluded that the only appropriate punishment was a lifetime ban from teaching.
The following article is paraphrased from the following: Teacher fakes brother’s death to skive work before probe finds she not even qualified, Charlie Duffield, 12 Aug 2022, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teacher-fakes-brothers-death-skive-27728828
