A housemistress at a prestigious public school in the UK has been suspended after being accused of engaging in “sexual banter” with a female student and giving alcohol to sixth-form students.

Jocelyn D’Arcy was escorting a pupil to a medical appointment and was said to have quipped that they “wouldn’t mind being alone with the doctor” and then advised that “if he asks if you are sexually active, say no, but I’d like to be”.

Officials at £42,000-a-year Rugby School suspended D’Arcy and removed her as housemistress.

The maths teacher, who was educated at Oxford and Cambridge universities, as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, eventually faced 19 allegations of misconduct.

School managers claimed that those incidents had all occurred within the first two months of D’Arcy taking up her position at the school.

It was alleged that the housemistress had caused “fear and distress” among a group of 14-year-olds when she asked one of them to remove her top and angrily threw a mobile phone.

D’Arcy was also accused of having entered a pupil’s room and throwing her dirty washing into the hallway — and of serving sixth-formers alcohol at lunchtime.

D’Arcy resigned and sued the school for discrimination, claiming that her behaviour was the result of suffering from ADHD, anxiety and depression.

An employment tribunal has now dismissed majority of the claims concluding that D’Arcy had exercised “poor judgment” that “seriously called into question her suitability for the housemistress role”.