Helensburgh head teacher faces being struck off for (ice) creaming it

(Updated: verdict below) Glasgow man, Donald Matheson, former head teacher at Helensburgh’s Hermitage Academy is facing – in absentia, with medical certification – a conduct hearing at the disciplinary sub-committee of Scotland’s General Teaching Council.

He is charged with pocketing the £50-a-week charge for an informal licence he gave to an ice-cream van to set up daily within the school grounds.

Mr Matheson has already , in January 2006, appeared in court on these charges but, because of witness problems, the proseecution case was eventually dropped.

On the day that he then appeared in court, it was announced that his employer, Argyll and Bute Council, had accepted his early retirement and allowed him to do so with a full pension.

If the Teaching Council tribunal finds against him, Mr Matheson faces being stuck off the teaching register.

The picture painted is one of the brown envelopes so evocative after the affair where some UK MPs – most famously Neil Hamilton, accepted backhanders from Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods, for asking Parliamentary questions on matters of commercial interest to him.

At The Hermitage, the owner of the ice cream van came to the school office weekly with a wodge of readies which he slapped on the counter for onward transmission to the head teacher.

The school secretary would then put them in the said brown envelope marked: ‘Mr Matheson ice cream money’.

The school’s Office Manager, Mrs Maureen Purves, has told the tribunal that this pattern went on ‘for months’ and that the money was never lodged to the schools account.

Then, on 25th May 2005, auditors arrived without warning to examine the school’s accounts. Ms Ann Holmes,a former clerical assistant at the school, has told the tribunal that on that same day Mr Matheson gave her a brown envelope  full of banknotes and instructed her to pay it in, that day, to the School’s General Purpose Fund account for which she had administrative responsibility.

She was told to lodge it as money received from the ice cream van. In order to make the lodgment, Ms Holmes counted the money. It came to a total of £1,660. She said that this was the first occasion on which she had been given cash to lodge from this source.

This sum represents around 8 months of payments from the ice cream van owner.

Ironically,Mr Matheson is a former Chair of the General Teaching Council Scotland.

(Updated 00.01 11th March) It emerged that the period over which the arrangement with the ice cream van owner was around 18 months long. Mr Matheson was fund guilty at the close of the tribunal yesterday (10th March) and has now been struck off the teaching register.