‘She was a bit concerned because he seemed so old. ‘He started FaceTiming my friend, sending her messages, asking how close she lived to the school,’ said one GCSE student. The case immediately began to make headlines, with parents and politicians quick to raise concerns that the safety of potentially impressionable children had been seriously compromised.
On November 2, the day Siavash was due to sit a mock maths exam, it emerged that both he and his younger brother had been pulled out of Stoke High pending a full investigation. I don’t want my kids there any longer until he is out.’Ī third parent observed: ‘It’s not a nice thought that this man is around children and sitting with them at lunch.’Įventually, the school passed on concerns about his age to the Home Office. ‘In one of the pictures I’ve seen of him, he has more of a beard than I do. Apparently, he sits on a bench at break times close to where a group of girls hang out, just looking.’ĭesmond Newby, a 51-year-old father of two Stoke High pupils, was one of several reported to have removed their children from the school. ‘So my son’s school now let’s in 30-year-old men,’ wrote a woman calling herself Hollie Dayinn on Facebook. Stoke High School, which is an Ormiston Academy in Ipswich, where some of the parent's concerns were dismissed by staff, who in some cases had claimed the objections were motivated by racism Around the time of half term, an image of Siavash in a Year 11 classroom appeared on Snapchat, a networking app popular with teenagers, accompanied by the caption ‘How is there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?’Īround the same time, parents began asking awkward questions, taking an understandably dim view of the potential presence of a grown man being educated alongside their children. This being 2018, the rumours soon hit social media. ‘My son asked him how old he was and he replied that he was aged 25 and married with two kids,’ she told the Daily Mail. The parent of a GCSE pupil was told the Iranian had confessed to being in his mid-20s.
It didn’t take long for the rumour mill to creak into action, as students began to speculate that the Iranian asylum seeker was brazenly lying about his age in order to get a free education, and indeed remain in the country.Īccording to playground gossip, Siavash even confided to one contemporary that he was a married father of two who had decided to pose as a teenager because his academic qualifications weren’t recognised in the UK.
Everyone was making jokes as we went into registration saying, “What is a man doing in our school?”’ It was almost as if he had them to make himself look younger. He was wearing glasses, but they did not look prescription. ‘You could see the shadow of his beard on his face. ‘As soon as he started at the school, we all thought he looked far too old,’ a girl in Siavash’s year later recalled. In the cold light of day, many suspected he was nearer 30 than 20.Ī Facebook picture of a man with a moustache which parents at Stoke High School shared on social media as the account had the same name as Siavash
He also boasted a protruding Adam’s apple and a hairline that, from a certain angle, was starting to recede. Namely: Large numbers of the 668 girls and boys at Stoke High, an under-performing academy in a gritty neighbourhood of Ipswich just south of the city centre, came rapidly to the conclusion that the supposed new boy was not actually a boy at all, but very much a fully-grown man.Īt 6ft 1in, he stood head and shoulders over many classmates, while his chin was flecked with stubble.
Unlike many a teenager, the bespectacled youngster even managed to tuck his shirt in. In class, he worked diligently and talked politely to teachers. Siavash could speak only broken English, but by all accounts he threw himself into school life, turning up at the start of each day with smartly brushed hair and a spotless blazer, tie and V-neck sweater. Should they gain sufficient qualifications, the taxpayer would even be required to foot the bill for them to attend university. A pupil at Stoke High School in Ipswich posted a Snapchat image of a fellow student in his maths class with the caption, ‘how's there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?’