A science teacher caught stashing hundreds of pornographic and racist images on a laptop at a Cullingworth school has been banned from teaching.

Stephen Moon cannot re-apply as a registered teacher for two years according to a prohibition order made on Friday at a professional conduct hearing of the General Teaching Council (GTC). He was sacked from his £43,000-a-year post as head of science at Parkside School, in Cullingworth, when a hoard of inappropriate images which had been stored and forwarded over five years were found on his school laptop.

Mr Moon, who had been a teacher for 20 years and was 44 at the time, had a claim for unfair dismissal rejected by a tribunal last year.

A written statement by the GTC states: "He had failed to maintain appropriate standards of integrity in the use of the school's laptop and had brought the reputation and standing of the profession into serious disrepute."