When Greg Robinson pulled an earphone from a student's ear, he never imagined it would tarnish his teaching career and begin a three-year 'nightmare”. Stuff's National Correspondent Tony Wall investigates.

It had been a fairly orderly maths lesson at Mount Maunganui College, the year 10 students seated at computers facing the walls, but then they started getting restless.

Their semi-retired relief teacher, Greg Robinson, who'd specialised in English during his 40-year career, didn't blame them.

'I know an hour doing maths ... is probably difficult for anyone,” he says. The school's policy around phone use was that it was at the teacher's discretion.

'As a privilege I let these two boys listen [to music] on a phone,” Robinson recalls of that day in October 2019. 'The next minute, they were jumping around in their seats.”

Robinson, 69 at the time, now 72, told them he'd confiscate the phone if they didn't cut it out. They put it away, but were soon at it again, sharing an earphone each and head-banging and drumming on the desk with their hands.

Robinson reached for the phone, intending to pull the earphones from the jack, but the boy got to it first.

Student witnesses later described Robinson 'ripping” the earphone from the boy's ear. In a written statement shortly after the incident, Robinson said he 'snatched” the earphone wires from about 30cm away from the boy's ear. He told Stuff it was more like a 'flick”.

The upshot was that the wires separated and were broken, prompting an outburst from the 14-year-old.

'He jumped up and called me a f...ing old c... and [said] ‘you're gonna replace my f...ing earphones',” Robinson says.

'I said ‘maybe I will, if you sit down and behave yourself'.”

Student witnesses later testified that Robinson refused to replace the earphones, saying things like 'make me” and 'what are you going to do about it”, while one claimed he told the boy to 'sit the f... down”.

Robinson denies he swore. He only said he wouldn't replace the earphones when the boy kept abusing him, he says.

He fetched another teacher, who took the boy away. That might have been the end of a peculiarly modern-day classroom drama, but then something disturbing happened.

'A girl from a different corner of the room comes up and says ‘we saw you hit him',” Robinson says. 'I knew from the ‘we' they'd been colluding about it while I was out of the room. I hadn't hit him.”

Because there was a striking allegation – two girls claimed he'd hit the back of the boy's head with the back of his hand – he was told the school had no choice but to report it to the Teaching Council.

(The boy never alleged he was hit, and there was no complaint from his parents.)

A dispute Robinson assumed would be cleared up with an apology and an offer to buy new earphones was about to escalate into a saga of Kafkaesque proportions.

It had been a successful career up until then.

Originally from Mt Maunganui, he began teaching in 1975 and spent a couple of years teaching in London, before getting jobs at Tauranga Boys' College and later head of the English department at Karamu High School in Hastings.

Greg Robinson was found guilty of serious misconduct by the Teaching Council.

He and wife Alison had three children while in Hawke's Bay in the 90s, but wanted to get back to Bay of Plenty, so Robinson took a break from teaching and took up real estate in Tauranga.

Teaching called him again, though, and he took a role teaching English to international students at Mount College, which his own kids had attended.

He spent 13 years at the college, retiring in 2015, but working as a relief teacher during winter months to supplement his pension.

He says his teaching style has been described as 'laid back”.

'I think I develop pretty strong relationships with kids,” he says.

At the time of the Teaching Council's disciplinary process starting, Robinson was no longer a member of the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) – 'I was a member for 35 years but didn't think I'd need it again” – so represented himself and paid his own legal fees.

He hoped it could all be sorted out within a few weeks, but says a Complaints Assessment Committee (CAC) didn't meet until July 2020 to discuss the case, nine months after the incident.

It took another two months for Robinson to see the committee's report.

Teaching Council chief executive Lesley Hoskin says it aims to have complaints before the CAC within eight months of receiving them, and if the case goes to the Disciplinary Tribunal, it generally takes another eight months.

The recent passing of the Education and Training Amendment Act speeds up the disciplinary process, Hoskin says.

'These investigations take time, and it is important the matter is considered appropriately.”

In Robinson's case, the CAC threw out the striking charge for lack of evidence, but found that the removal and breaking of the earphones and Robinson's alleged failure to 'de-escalate” the situation constituted 'serious misconduct”.

Robinson had assumed that if the hitting charge was thrown out, that would be the end of it.

Although he was technically able to continue teaching during this time, work had dried up – the college was no longer calling him for relief shifts.

'You'd think people with half a brain ... would say, ‘we've had the old bugger on the ropes for nine months ... he's been found not guilty of what he was charged with, isn't it time to say enough's enough?'”

The teachers' disciplinary process works like a court, where a Disciplinary Tribunal, independent of the Teaching Council, considers teacher misconduct cases. The CAC acts as prosecutor.

Both bodies are made up of experienced teachers, with the tribunal chaired by a lawyer, in this case barrister Theo Baker of Wellington.

The CAC engaged a law firm, which produced a lengthy report sent to Robinson on Christmas Eve, 2020. The lawyer then announced she wanted to interview the seven student witnesses again, which Robinson says she did twice during the school holidays in January 2021.

'This could have been done when those kids were at school in about half an hour,” he says. In the end, the law firm presented a bill for about $18,000, he says, which he and the council shared.

The disciplinary tribunal wanted to hold its hearing in Tauranga and hear directly from witnesses. Robinson objected, not wanting to put the students through that; in the end the case was heard 'on the papers”.

The tribunal released its decision in April 2021, finding that pulling the earphones amounted to serious misconduct as it was an 'unjustified and unreasonable use of physical force” that was likely to 'adversely affect [the student's] wellbeing”.

The fact the boy started yelling and swearing showed that he was distressed, 'and it was likely that he was experiencing considerable angst from embarrassment that this exchange had occurred in front of his peers”.

The tribunal found Robinson's failure to de-escalate the incident amounted to misconduct, rather than serious misconduct.

While it was reasonable to require the boys to stop misbehaving, the panel found, Robinson's approach was the problem.

'A 14-year-old boy needs to be coached and given some reasons for modifying his actions, not backed into a corner,” the ruling said.

The panel, also including teachers Puti Gardiner and Kiri Turketo​, found that Robinson could have apologised for the earphone breakage, 'explaining it was unintentional, using a calm voice and backing away rather than having a ‘stand-off'”.

The tribunal noted that the CAC submitted that Robinson 'lacked insight” into his actions – he'd accused the CAC of having an 'excessively student-centred approach” – and there would be 'limited scope for rehabilitation”.

The tribunal censured Robinson and imposed a condition on his practising certificate that he provide a copy of its decision to any future employer for the next two years.

The panel conceded Robinson's offending wasn't as serious as other cases involving assault or swearing at students, but said it did meet the definition of serious misconduct.

Robinson says he was happy to admit to misconduct, but not serious misconduct.

'It wasn't my flashest moment in teaching ... one split second, bad judgment. But I'm not a creeping paedophile or a habitual bully of children, which is what I'm lumped with as guilty of serious misconduct.”

Robinson engaged Wellington lawyer Gaeline​ Phipps​, unsuccessfully appealing first to the district court, then the Court of Appeal.

Although some of the work was done pro bono, Robinson estimates he's out of pocket $55,000 in legal fees and loss of income.

Phipps says it's surprising that Robinson's actions were deemed to be serious misconduct.

'The Education Act was drafted in a way that the [teaching] council wanted to get all sorts of things reported to it, because that was a good way of making sure that people who are ... grooming children are picked up.

'The threshold for having to make a report was very low, but what's happened is, it seems the threshold for making a finding isn't as high as it should be. It was meant to be a funnel, not a chute.”

The Teaching Council's Hoskin says she can't comment on individual cases but points out that the complaints committee, disciplinary tribunal and a district court judge have reviewed the evidence, all concluding it is a case of serious misconduct.

Under the teachers' code of professional responsibility, inappropriate conduct includes grabbing, shoving, pushing, or using physical force to manage behaviour, she says.

Melanie Webber, president of the PPTA, says if Robinson had been a member, his legal fees would have been paid and things might have worked out differently.

'A field officer would have come in on his behalf and ... worked on mediation between him and the school at an earlier stage.”

No-one from Mount College could be reached for comment.

Webber says she is sympathetic towards Robinson for what he went through, but is concerned that some commentary around the case seems to be advocating a return to corporal punishment.

'Teaching is increasingly hard. But things that were acceptable in our society in the ‘80s are not acceptable now.

'Something needed to happen in this situation, but ideally that doesn't involve laying your hands on someone. If someone ... pulled my earphones out of my ears, I'd be pretty upset.”

Robinson could have appealed to the Supreme Court, but has given up. His teaching registration lapsed in August, and he won't renew it.

He's been 'humbled and moved” by the outpouring of support he's had from teachers since news of his case broke.

'They contacted me because they were basically horrified by what they'd read.”

Wife Alison says the effect on the whole family has been huge. Greg has been subdued and his sleeping disrupted, she says.

'It's disgusting – for something that is concocted and trivial. Greg is very experienced and he's dealt with lots of kids – I'd hate to think what would have happened if it was a less experienced teacher.”

Robinson says the bodies involved in the disciplinary process 'are a law unto themselves”.

'My great sense of injustice is them insisting on continuing it [after the assault complaint was thrown out]. Three years down the track, can they demonstrate any good done for those children or any teachers anywhere?”

-Stuff/Tony Wall.