A female PE teacher accused of having sex with a 16-year-old pupil admitted lying to police about being in touch with him because she ‘didn’t want it to blow up’.

Bronwen James, 30, said she was ‘easily influenced’ and wanted to be ‘perceived as a nice person’ so kept their communication quiet.

Giving evidence at court on Monday, she admitted giving him a lift home once after he messaged her but denied ever giving him a vape or making sexual comments.

James is on trial accused of four counts of sexual activity with the teenager, which she denies.  

She is said to have taken the pupil to her home for sex after they exchanged ‘flirtatious’ messages on Snapchat,

He said they had sex at her house while they watched Wimbledon and she asked him to call her ‘Miss’. 

James, a teacher at Bitterne Park School in Southampton, Hampshire, where the boy was a pupil, claims he was ‘put up’ to make the allegations by another pupil. 

Taking the stand for the first time, James said she was not a very good teacher but wanted to be popular with those she taught. 

Bronwen James was teaching PE at Bitterne Park School in Southampton, Hampshire, at the time of the alleged offences

James, 30, pictured arriving at court on an earlier occasion. She denies the charges

She said she had a ‘very relaxed’ teaching style which included joking with the students but denied that it was ever sexual.

She said: ‘It was never of a sexual nature. Just joking around about different things.

‘There were some inappropriate comments.

‘It goes back to the point that I didn’t want to damage the student-teacher relationship that I had gained with the class and I wanted them to like me.’

Jurors were told James had previously ‘received a written warning for exchanging text messages’ from her former school, Seaford College, where she worked between 2018 and 2019.

Seaford College is a £54,000-per-year boarding school in West Sussex.

An investigation was launched into her relationship with the boy at Bitterne Park after a screenshot of messages between them was shared in a WhatsApp group.  

Edward Culver, prosecuting, asked James: ‘Bearing in mind that you had already received a written warning for communicating with a student at your last place of employment, why were you communicating when you know you shouldn’t?’

She replied: ‘I don’t know. I think I wanted to be liked. I didn’t want to let people down. I was easily influenced. I wanted to be perceived as a nice person.’

The court heard James initially told the police that the teenager had been to her address once but never inside her home or car. However, she later accepted she had once dropped him home. 

When asked about lying, she said: ‘Because I was aware that I had already had a written warning and communicating with him in the first place was the wrong thing to do.

‘I know that nothing had happened sexually and I didn’t want it to blow up into something that it didn’t need to. I was scared.’

She later admitted that when she told the police that he had never been to her home or in her car that that was a lie.

When asked why the alleged victim gave evidence about the ‘horrible, monstrous’ charges four years later, James said: ‘I don’t know why four years later.

‘I think he maybe wanted to look cool in front of his mates. He wanted to brag to his mates that he was in a relationship with a teacher.

‘I don’t know why he did it.’   

Earlier on Monday she said she did not think she was ready to teach when she first started aged around 21. 

‘I was still quite immature. Although I loved the subject, maybe I wasn’t there to teach the students,’ she told the court. 

‘I just don’t think I was ready for it. I was there to teach the students but as my career progressed I realised I was seeking validation from the wrong people due to my level of teaching.’

She later admitted that she was ‘immature’ but said she did not realise at the time. She also said that she did not think that she was a good teacher. She continued: ‘I was a very lenient teacher. I wasn’t strict. There were behaviour protocols that weren’t necessarily followed such as using mobile phone in lessons.’

James said that she taught a coursework-based diploma to Year 10 and Year 11 pupils and would allow them to listen to music on their phones if it helped them work.

She said: ‘I didn’t want to upset them. I didn’t want to anger them. I wanted them to do their work.’

She admitted that being popular with the students was important to her. When she was asked if pupils liked being in her lessons, she said: ‘Yes I think it happened quite frequently.

‘I think I took it as a compliment. If a student was to realise that they had me as a teacher they would get excited. They would say can we be with Miss James rather than the other teacher. It felt like a compliment to me.’  

Francesca Mason, the officer in the case, said analysis of her phone showed there was no evidence on Snapchat communication between James and the alleged victim.

She also said that no references to the ‘Number 8’ were found when a key word search was done.

Prosecutors say James, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, named the boy ‘Number 8’ in her phonebook as a ‘cover’, suggesting he was ‘the eighth man or boy she had slept with’.

The boy cannot be named for legal reasons. The trial continues.