A teacher who French-kissed a 14-year-old girl and questioned pupils about their sex lives has been spared jail because of a heart condition.

Keith Ogunsola, 44, a married father from Banstead, grabbed the stunned teenager in his office before putting his tongue in her mouth.

The science master, who taught at schools in Carshalton and Essex, also asked girls in a chemistry class whether they had performed oral sex.

At Snaresbrook Crown Court last month he was given warning that he faced a custodial sentence for committing “a huge breach of trust”.

But last Friday Judge Martin Zeidman, QC, handed him a 12-week suspended term after reading cardiology reports from Epsom and St Helier NHS trust.

The judge told Ogunsola: “Certainly what you have done doesn’t deserve a death sentence.

"I'm just persuaded that it would be right in the circumstances of this case to suspend the sentence of imprisonment.

“You will never again be employed as a school teacher. My primary concern is to protect members of the public and other potential pupils.

Judge Zeidman also praised the victim’s courage, saying: “I want to pay tribute to the girl who bravely made this complaint. She’s a very impressive young lady.

“A less courageous person might not have made the complaint in the first place.”

A jury convicted Ogunsola of the sexual attack in Ilford, Essex, last year, but cleared him of an attempted sex assault on a girl of 15 at the same school in 2006.

The science master was also acquitted of two indecent assaults on teenage girls at the school in Carshalton, between January and May 2000.

During the trial it emerged that the former headteacher of the Carshalton school had warned Ogunsola about his conduct with girl pupils before the alleged assaults.

Ogunsola, who denied molesting any of his students, said the pupils in his care there had been a “nightmare and disruptive”.

He was banned indefinitely from working with girls under 18 and ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years.

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