A WOMAN who was convicted of fraud has been banned from the classroom indefinitely after lying to a Bradford school on a job application.

Following a professional conduct hearing, the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) said 39-year-old Shivarna Mitra’s conduct had fallen “significantly short of the standards expected by the profession”.

In 2009, Ms Mitra was convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation.

The offences took place in August and September 2007, at a time when she was employed as a sales consultant and had sought to re-direct employees’ wages into her own bank account.

She was handed a 12-month community order with a 100-hour unpaid work requirement and ordered to pay £2,537.

In November 2017, Ms Mitra submitted an application for employment with Southmere Primary Academy which contained a “considerable amount of inaccurate information” including a claim that she had been head of Key Stage 2 in her current and previous role.

The TRA report said: “In fact the information was false, her previous employer was not a school but an after school club and Ms Mitra had not held the roles she purported to.

“Further, her description of the circumstances of the offences for which she was convicted were false. The job application contained a declaration that the information contained therein was true.”

In an interview, Ms Mitra, who ended up being employed by the school, did not correct any of the inaccurate information in the application and submitted a forged certificate of Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills status from the Society for Education and Training.

The report also set out how references and emails of support from a ‘Person A’ were part of Ms Mitra’s deception.

The school was unable to verify the existence of ‘Person A’ and “the emails appear to have been sent or arranged to have been sent by Ms Mitra”, said the report.

The panel said Ms Mitra’s conduct was a “premeditated and carefully planned course of conduct in which a significant amount of vital information supplied as part of the application process was deliberately and knowingly false”.

The report said: “This took place over a significant period of time and when it was about to be discovered Ms Mitra sought to conceal her actions by sending or causing to be sent additional emails from Person A.”

She was said to be guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct” and the panel said there was no evidence of any insight or remorse.

Ms Mitra will not be entitled to apply for restoration of her eligibility to teach, the report said.