A NEWLY qualified teacher took photographs of pupils undressing and sexually touched a boy he was mentoring.

Joshua Plank, 24, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court yesterday after earlier admitting two counts of voyeurism and one charge of sexual activity with a child.

The Oxford Mail is prevented from naming the Oxfordshire school at which he taught to protect the identity of the victims.

Prosecutor Cathy Olliver told the court Plank, of Signet, Burford, began teaching at the school in January 2010.

On February 18 that year, a Year 11 pupil was changing his clothes in a classroom after a lesson when Plank began taking photographs of him.

After the incident was reported the defendant was arrested and the headteacher of the school told police of a previous incident in December 2010.

A Year Seven pupil had been receiving tuition from Plank, who had read him a passage from Tom Brown’s Schooldays before acting out a roleplay in which he bent the child over and smacked him on the back of his legs. The school had cautioned Plank not to work alone with pupils after the incident but had taken no further action.

Jason Taylor, defending, said his client is a “young man who effectively is a tortured soul, somebody who was desperately struggling with his own sexual identity and the feelings he was experiencing”.

Judge Anthony King gave him a three-year community order with a requirement to attend a sex-offender treatment programme, pay £800 costs and sign the sex offender register for five years. He was also banned from working with children for life.