A teacher who was called a “bloody immigrant” and a “nigger” by pupils and advised by a colleague to go to work in a “more ethnically diverse school” if she wanted promotion, has won her case for unfair dismissal.

Samantha Burmis, 39, was dismissed from her job as a maths teacher at Aylesford School, Kent, after she reported a colleague for smoking cannabis on a residential trip with pupils aged 11 to 13. Instead of securing a proper investigation of her allegations, Mrs Burmis, from Gravesend, Kent, was dismissed for “gross misconduct, gross negligence and gross dereliction of duty”.

Mrs Burmis said yesterday that she had been subjected to racist taunts from the moment she arrived at the school in 2001, but every time she reported it, her bosses swept it under the carpet. “In my second week, two boys started singing in my class that they could see a nigger. Later, after I lent my ruler to another boy, he returned it to me saying, ‘You are my nigger now’,” she said.

The tribunal was told that the school’s deputy head, Douglas Lawson, had referred to Mrs Burmis as “dark meat” and a “nigger”. The tribunal reported that Mr Lawson did not deny using such words at the time, but said simply that they were meant as “sweeping statements”.

Mrs Burmis’s problems came to a head during a residential school trip in 2003 to a PGL centre in Marchant’s Hill, Surrey, where she became the object of unwanted sexual advances from a colleague, Mike Grosvenor, a French teacher. They were among a number of teachers who took about 50 pupils on the trip.

The tribunal was told that Mrs Burmis, Mr Grosvenor, another teacher and two 16-year-old girl pupils who were acting as “helpers” ended up in the same bedroom, where alcohol was drunk and a verbally explicit game was played by the teachers.

Although she admitted that she did drink alcohol and participate in the game in front of pupils, Mrs Burmis said she tried unsuccessfully to get her colleagues to stop as she regarded their actions as inappropriate.

Mrs Burmis, a Briton whose parents are from Jamaica, said she found out that Mr Grosvenor had falsely claimed about sleeping with her on the trip. It was also claimed that Mr Grosvenor and one of the 16-year-old pupils smoked cannabis. She complained to the school about Mr Grosvenor’s behaviour, but found it difficult to get the school to investigate properly.

When an internal inquiry was eventually launched by Mr Lawson, who is now the head, she ended up being sacked for her own behaviour on the trip.

Mr Grosvenor was allowed to resign and was later struck off the official register of the General Teaching Council (GTC). Mrs Burmis brought a case of unfair dismissal before an employment tribunal and won on the grounds of racial and sexual discrimination.

In a 283-page judgment, the tribunal said it believed Mrs Burmis’s account “that she was continually sexually harassed by Mike Grosvenor” and that the trip “provided a perfect opportunity” for that to continue.

The tribunal, which lasted 42 days over almost two years, described the school’s investigation of Mrs Burmis’s complaints as unfair, “chaotic . . . inadequate and incomplete”.

Kent County Council said in a statement that the head teacher and governing body at Aylesford School did not accept the judgments, and it was supporting a formal appeal against the ruling. The GTC said that it had discontinued proceedings against Mrs Burmis after the judgment.

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