A BLACKBURN teacher has been banned from the classroom after lying to bosses of a Prestwich school about being sacked from her previous job.

Terasa Pukiello was suspended from her role as deputy headteacher at Cloughside College, a school for young patients of Prestwich Hospital, last year when bosses spotted a paperwork glitch.

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Ms Pukiello had filled in a form claiming she earned £12,793 more than she actually did in her last role at St Wilfrid’s Academy in Blackburn and that she left for a ‘new challenge’ – when the truth was that she had been sacked for gross misconduct after forging a letter to a mortgage firm.

The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) this week held a disciplinary hearing into Ms Pukiello’s conduct and, in a report said they had banned her from working as a teacher indefinitely.

A Bury Local Education Authority spokesman said: “It is a serious matter when teachers do not tell the truth in job applications, and following our investigation we referred the case to the NCTL and the teacher has now been prohibited from teaching.”

According to the report, Ms Pukiello began work at St Wilfrid’s Academy in September 2007. She was not a qualified teacher and was offered the role of assistant headteacher on the condition that she became a qualified teacher within a year.

However, she was demoted to unqualified teacher status. She became a qualified teacher in March 2011 and taught English at the school on a salary of £31,552.

But when a mortgage provider contacted the school in March 2013 to query a reference letter nobody had any recollection of sending it. The letter stated that Ms Pukiello’s salary was £33,660, that she was advancing onto the leadership scale and the signature had been forged. After an internal investigation, Ms Pukiello was sacked for gross misconduct.

In September 2013, Ms Pukiello became temporary deputy headteacher at Cloughside College and applied later that month to take up the role permanently. She stated she had worked as an ‘assistant head for inclusion’ in her previous job, that she earned £44,525 and left ‘to undertake new challenges’.

But when senior staff called St Wilfrid’s Academy to check Ms Pukiello’s application form was accurate, another discrepancy emerged.

It turned out she had written a letter on St Wilfrid’s Academy-headed paper claiming she had never suffered health problems when she had been off work on eight separate occasions through illness.

The NCTL panel concluded that Ms Pukiello acted dishonestly.