A TEACHER who admitted sending flirtatious and sexually suggestive messages to a pupil has avoided a classroom ban after appearing before an education disciplinary panel.

Craig Wrangles, aged 43, claimed to have been using "teenager speak" when he sent messages via Twitter and WhatsApp while he was a physics teacher at Cowley Language College.

The panel of the National College for Teaching and Learning found he used such terms as "love ya", "love you" and "love you most" when he communicated with the girl known as pupil A.

They also saw a message on Twitter from Wrangles to the schoolgirl stating: "Right I gotta go baby." Wrangles also admitted to the panel sending inappropriate sexually suggestive messages.

The schoolgirls said the she and Wrangles had followed each other on Twitter from around November 2013 and began exchanging messages. Her sister discovered the Twitter messages and reported the matter to the college in January 2014. He was suspended the following day and resigned at the end of the month.

According to the disciplinary panel, the girl said that after December 23, 2013, Wrangles began sending messages via WhatsApp and asked for her number.

He had also asked her to send photos of herself and not to tell anyone that they had been in contact "as his job could be on the line".

The panel found that the messages "blurred the professional boundaries between Wrangles and pupil A".

However, they concluded that Wrangles motives were not sexual. Their report stated that neither had any intention of pursuing any sexual contact with each other adding: "Although sexually suggestive and clearly inappropriate given the teacher pupil relationship the panel considered the messages to have been of a flirtatious and playful nature rather than there having been any serious sexual intention on either part."

Finding Wrangler guilty of unacceptable professional conduct, the panel said that his actions may bring the teaching profession into disrepute. While they agreed that it would be a concern to parents that he had sent sexually suggestive messages to the pupil they did not believe that the girl had been seriously affected and at the time believed it to have been "playful banter".

The panel said this incident was out of character and has a previously good history and said it was not appropriate to ban him from teaching.

Giving the final decision on behalf of the Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, NCTL official Paul Heathcote said: "The panel considered the risk of repetition to be negligible given the level of insight and remorse demonstrated by Mr Wrangles at the hearing and the absence of sexual motivation in this case.

"Therefore they did not consider that pupils require protection from Mr Wrangles in the future."