Teaching assistant fired for calling boy a girl’s name and putting him in the female PE team leaving him in tears

A primary school teaching assistant was sacked after calling a boy a girl's name in class.

For his PE lesson, John Brelsford split his class by gender to play a game but, one child was left in tears when he was told to join the girl's team to make equal numbers, leaving him "humiliated" in front of his classmates.

An employment tribunal heard there weren't enough girls to make up equal teams and that some boys had to switch sides to make it fairer.

Mr Brelsford then called the boys who were playing in the girl's team by female names which left one "vulnerable" pupil, who has ADHD "crying", the hearing was told.

After the boy got upset, the teaching assistant called the boy a "baby" in front of the class an his friends.

Mr Brelsford was fired following the incident and received a formal warning following complaints about his behaviour from parents and staff.

The tribunal also heard how Mr Brelsford had also previously called pupils "stupid" for not knowing their times tables.

Mr Brelsford is also said to have searched "Gingerphobia" on Google in front of his class which led to a child with red hair being teased by other kids.

Mr Brelsford had claimed he was sacked because of a "vendetta" against him, but the tribunal threw out his claim of unfair dismissal ruling he could have been fired "much sooner than he was".

Mr Brelsford worked at St Wilfrid’s Primary School, a Catholic voluntary aided academy in Sheffield before he was fired.