David Buchanan-Smith has been removed from the General Teaching Council (GTC) Scotland register of teachers after being convicted at Glasgow Sheriff Court last July of public decency offences.
The provisionally registered teacher admitted exposing his private parts and masturbating at the retail hub, Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park and elsewhere on various occasions between July 3 and September 23, 2024.
Buchanan-Smith was sentenced to a Community Payback Order with a 12-month supervision period in September last year.
It is understood that he was employed as a probationary teacher at a primary school in East Ayrshire when the matter came to light.
Ahead of the GTC’s decision, the fitness to teach panel received a response from the teacher which stated he was not currently teaching and was not actively looking to teach at present.
In this he did, however, express a wish to be able to teach again at “some point in the future.”
The panel noted that the teacher regretted his actions and that he had advised that he is currently undergoing counselling and engaging with social work to better manage his mental health and behaviours.
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In making their decision to remove Buchanan-Smith from the register, the panel, however, also noted that the teacher had been convicted of offences involving public indecency and that these offences had been committed over a period of some three months in a variety of locations.
There appeared to the panel at least a disregard on the part of the teacher as to whether his behaviour would impact on members of the public or not.
The decision published by the GTC further stated: “While the panel acknowledged that the teacher had been sentenced by the Sheriff Court to a Community Payback Order with a period of supervision for 12 months and that he had not been placed on the Sex Offender’s Register, it remained of the view that the offences were serious and it accepted that they were sexually motivated.”
The panel was satisfied that that the conviction amounted to serious breach of the GTC’S Code of Professionalism and Conduct and that the teacher’s behaviour had fallen “short of the professional standards expected of a teacher.”
The panel was therefore unanimously of the view that the public would be concerned regarding the nature of the conviction in this case and that it would be viewed as conduct which was fundamentally incompatible with being a teacher.
“The panel also considered that the public interest required it to take into account protection of the public in a case such as this and that having failed to evidence that he had remedied his behaviour the teacher did pose an ongoing risk,” the GTC also stated in their decision.
“The panel concluded that the teacher’s conduct had fallen significantly short of the standards expected of a registered teacher and he is currently unfit to teach.”
