A relationship between a teacher and a former student who became pregnant with his child a few months after leaving the school did not breach any professional boundaries, the Teaching Disciplinary Tribunal found.
In a decision released on Friday, the Complaints Assessment Committee (CAC) referred a charge against the teacher, who cannot be named in order to protect the student's identity, claiming he breached professional boundaries by engaging in a relationship with a former student, Student S.
The teacher said his intimate relationship with Student S, who was 18 at the time, started around March or April 2014, a few months after she had left school in December 2013.
In March 2014, she joined the teacher's adult Kapa Haka team which included around four former students from the school, and a relationship started between the pair not long after.
Student S discovered she was pregnant in April 2014 and the school became aware of the pair's relationship when their baby was born in 2015.
The pair are no longer in a sexual relationship.
The teacher told the Tribunal he didn't think he had done anything wrong and wasn't aware of the seriousness of the situation until the principal explained it to him.
The Tribunal hearing was in November 2018 at a decision was made in April 2019.
The Tribunal found that while the age difference between the teacher and Student S was "relatively significant" and the time between when the student finished her schooling and the relationship beginning was relatively short, the relationship between the pair was not inappropriate.
The Tribunal was not satisfied that those two factors alone meant the teacher embarked on an inappropriate relationship, and said there was no evidence to support that there was a persisting power imbalance between the two.
"The lack of evidence about Student S's emotional and social maturity in March/April 2014, it would be speculative to find that she was vulnerable and that the respondent effectively remained her teacher because he was in a position of 'trust, care, authority and influence'."
The Tribunal said it would be "wrong and patronising" for the Tribunal to assume the former student lacked the maturity to enter what appears to be an "equal consensual relationship".
"There is not, and cannot be, a blanket prohibition on intimate relationships between teachers and former students."
However, the Tribunal noted the national guidelines state that teachers should not assume they will be protected from disciplinary action by claiming a relationship began only after the school term concluded or exams finished.
