Pianist who groped girl, 15, overturns teaching ban

A CONCERT pianist has won a High Court challenge against the Education Secretary’s decision to ban him from teaching indefinitely after sexually assaulting a girl of 15 while simultaneously French-kissing her mother.

Robin Zebaida, 51, was convicted in November 2013 of groping the girl at his flat in St John’s Wood, north-west London.

However, a judge has ruled that, as Zebaida was not employed as a teacher either at the time of the conduct or at the time his case was referred to the minister, there was no jurisdiction to impose the ban.

The Oxford-educated classical pianist was sentenced in a criminal trial to a two-year conditional discharge order, issued with a sex offenders’ notice for two years and ordered to pay a victim surcharge. The judge considered the offence to be “a grave misjudgment” which took advantage of the vulnerability of a child.

Zebaida appeared before a teachers’ professional conduct panel in April 2015 to face a charge of “bringing the profession into disrepute”. Zebaida’s representative argued the panel had no authority “to hear allegations about a teacher not currently teaching”. In 2000, he was a part-time music teacher at the Oratory school in London for one term. Between 1998 and 2013 he was a freelance music examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools.

Judge Anne Molyneux found the Education Secretary did not have jurisdiction to make the prohibition order.

A Department for Education spokesman expressed “extreme disappointment” with the judge’s ruling.