A FORMER headteacher, praised by Prince Charles, has been found guilty of an expenses swindle worth up to £17,000.

Rhod Porch, who quit Sun Hill Junior School in Alresford in 2007, submitted bogus car allowance, petrol and petty cash requests over five years.

The General Teaching Council found him guilty of siphoning £5,876 from petty cash; £1,947 for vehicle costs; £2,993 on using the school mobile for private calls; and inflated mileage claims from 2000-05.

Mr Porch had been feted by Prince Charles for turning around the fortunes of the school and in 2000 was invited to a reception at the prince’s home, Highgrove.

The GTC says there are question marks over a further £6,300 of car and petrol expenses. The authority found him guilty of “unacceptable professional conduct”

and banned him from being a head teacher or having roles involving school or local authority finance. Hampshire County Council refused to discuss the affair.

In a statement, David Kirk, executive county councillor for children’s services, said: “Legal proceedings are ongoing and, until they are concluded, neither we nor the school can make any comment about those proceedings.”

The council would not even say exactly who or what the proceedings involved or whether the police had been called in.

The county council statement added: “The Government requires the headteacher and governors of all schools to manage their school budget and to secure financial probity in all school financial matters. The county council’s audit team carries out random testing at schools and responds to specific intelligence.

“Our audit team has advised the school on additional controls that can be put in place to prevent such a situation occurring again and they have now opted to have their accounts audited under Hampshire County Council’s Financial Management Standards for Schools.”

A police spokesman said the matter had not been reported to them: “No-one has handed in a complaint, so it is still a civil matter.”

Mr Porch was a teacher for more than 30 years and was the Hampshire spokesman for the National Association of Headteachers.

He has been unavailable for comment.

One parent, who asked to remain anonymous, said of Mr Porch’s deceit: “I’m absolutely shocked. It’s still going round in my head. It makes me angry, but it’s not the school’s fault. I feel sorry for the current headteacher, Elizabeth Cooper, who’s got to sort all this out.”

The 35-year-old, who has a child at the school, said parents had been kept in the dark about the reasons for Mr Porch’s departure. “We all thought he was off through ill-health,” she added. “I think the school should have let everyone know about the investigation. It’s better to let us know than for us read it in a newspaper.”

Jill Otway, chairman of governors, said: “We have given parents as much information as we are allowed to give while the process is ongoing.

“As soon as we are able, it is our intention that parents, staff and governors will be the very first people to whom we issue fuller details, rather than snippets of information which might not illustrate the full context, and therefore hamper their understanding of the whole situation.”

Mrs Cooper, who served as deputy head during Mr Porch’s tenure, said the governors had always worked hard to keep parents as well informed as possible.

She added: “It would be impossible for it to happen again because of the financial standards that are now in place.”

County councillor, Jackie Porter, who worked under Mr Porch in the mid-1990s, said: “It’s absolutely right he’s caught and punished for this, but it’s sad the world has lost a lovely teacher. I think the school governors should perhaps tell parents about this, but I don’t know for how many it would still be relevant.”

Town councillor Simon Cook, a former governor at Perins School in Alresford, said: “Any public servant who takes money from a school should be ashamed and frankly deserves anything he gets.”

In May, 2000, Mr Porch was invited to a reception at the Prince of Wales’s home at Highgrove, which was called to recognise schools with high standards. It represented a quick turnaround in fortunes for the Alresford school, which had received a poor Ofsted report a few years earlier.

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