Harry art exam 'done by teacher'

Paintings submitted as part of Prince Harry's art A-level were the work of Eton's head of art, it was claimed today.

Photographs of the paintings were published around the world under Harry's name.

But they were done by Ian Burke, according to a teacher who claims she helped the prince cheat at the written part of his exam.

The allegation came on the opening day of an employment tribunal in which Harry's former art teacher Sarah Forsyth is claiming she was unfairly sacked.

Miss Forsyth claims she helped Harry pass his art exam in 2002, which with a pass in geography got him into Sandhurst. He started at the academy yesterday.

Today the tribunal in Reading was shown the prince's art work folder, with the name H. Wales on the cover, for which Miss Forsyth claims she wrote most of the coursework. Miss Forsyth said she suspected she had been asked to help to compensate for the fact that Harry was a weak student.

She said he had had problems with his studies going right back to his entrance examination for Eton. Miss Forsyth said she had been told that someone who marked the prince's entrance exam had been "desperate" to find points to which he could award marks.

Asked who wrote the text accompanying Harry's drawings for his art A-level, Miss Forsyth pointed to them and said: "I wrote that whilst looking at images provided. I wrote it straight onto a computer.

"It was printed off onto cartridge paper. I was not sure why I was being asked to do this but I did as Mr Burke had requested, preparing about four or five pages. As I was doing this another teacher saw me and asked me whether Prince Harry should not be doing this himself. I said I thought he should.

"Later the same evening I saw Mr Burke sitting side by side with Prince Harry at the same computer.

"They appeared to be reading through my text and deciding which bits should go in which place. Prince Harry thanked me, which was the only contact I had with him." Miss Forsyth, 30, of Tulse Hill, south-east London, claimed Mr Burke had not only added her commentary to the prince's coursework folder but had painted some of his other work.

In her witness statement she said: " Mr Burke's approach was occasionally to do the painting for the boys while he talked with them about betting or football.

"Some of the boys knew he would paint their pictures for them and would therefore encourage him to talk about his pet subjects to keep him painting. I also saw him painting boys' work in their absence which he made no attempt to hide from me."

It was Mr Burke who took the decision not to continue Miss Forsyth's contract because he said she was not good enough to teach at Eton.

But Miss Forsyth told the tribunal that he had himself been forced to resign from the college because of a drunken incident with a pupil.

The hearing was told that in the late Eighties Mr Burke quit after going out drinking in London with a pupil who was admitted to hospital with alcohol poisoning. Mr Burke's predecessor as Eton's head of art, John Booth, said in his witness statement that in the same incident Mr Burke also got involved in a dispute with a nurse and policeman.

Mr Burke left to teach at a comprehensive and later returned to Eton as head of art.

Miss Forsyth claims that Mr Burke bullied her throughout her three-year probationary contract at Eton and that he was "irrational and unfair". Miss Forsyth said she felt she had been dismissed not only because of her claims about helping Harry, but because Mr Burke "wanted to give his girlfriend a job".

She said that a year after being asked by Mr Burke to do the coursework for Harry she taped a conversation with the prince to prove her claim.

She said Harry confirmed that he had written "about a sentence" of the text.

Mr Burke denies painting Harry's and other students' work. He also denies the suggestion that a student had suffered alcohol poisoning in his charge.

The case continues.