A TEENAGER from Tyneside says her university dreams were shattered by a teacher who has been banned from the classroom for helping his students to cheat on exam coursework.

As reported in The Journal on Saturday, John Younghusband, who worked at All Saints College in Newcastle’s West End, was struck off for helping students to break the rules.

Now parents have hit out at Mr Younghusband, who they say blighted their children’s education.

He was banned from his profession indefinitely by the General Teaching Council after admitting six allegations of professional misconduct.

The panel heard that during the academic year of 2007/08 when he was employed as the head of expressive arts at the West Denton School, Mr Younghusband allowed students to submit work that was not their own.

He also provided false teacher statements, gave false grades for work he marked and failed to keep students’ coursework safe.

Pupils claim they had no idea what was happening and their grades were much lower than predicted.

And parents of former drama students said he had ruined their children’s careers.

One performing arts student, Amee O’Neil, 19, of Chapel House, Newcastle, said she is no longer able to go to university because of her teacher.

Her father Gary said: “It’s unbelievable that a teacher could do something like this. When the allegations first came about we had meetings with the headteacher.

“Someone should have been checking on him to make sure he was doing his job right. He has ruined my daughter’s career. She wanted to go on to university to study theatre studies but couldn’t because she didn’t get the grades.

“She was going into her final year when we found out what had happened. The school tried to put things right but it was too little, too late.

“Because of this our other daughter didn’t stay on at the sixth form – we took her elsewhere.”