AN ENGLISH teacher who was sacked after writing a racy novel which appeared online is appealing against the decision.

Salendine Nook mother Leonora Rustamova – known as Miss Rusty – told the Examiner yesterday that she believed she had been “over-punished”.

She wrote the book – “Stop! Don’t Read This!” – in a bid to engage with a difficult group of year 11 boys at a Calderdale school.

It featured the real names of students and teaching staff, included expletives and compared two boys to “gorgeous Mr Gay UK finalists”. It also refers to one pupil flirting and fantasising about ‘Miss Rusty’.

She was sacked from her £34,000-a-year post at Calder High School in Mytholmroyd, near Hebden Bridge, for gross misconduct in 2009.

Last month an employment tribunal in Leeds threw out her bid for reinstatement, although the appeal chairman voted in her favour.

Mrs Rustamova said her legal team had advised her it was “extremely unusual” for the chair of the panel to return a separate finding to the two lay members of the panel.

Mrs Rustamova said: “I am appealing against the decision.

“When you read the judgement, I didn’t understand at the time, but apparently it’s extremely unusual and unheard of for the judge to set out a judgement of his own separate to the lay members.

“It seems like a strange decision so we’re going to appeal it.

“The best option is this and I am hopeful. I apologised from the start and I feel there has been an over-punishment.”

She said she didn’t know when the appeal would take place, adding: “It took a long time for the original hearing to come round, so who knows when this will be heard.

“I feel like I’m in limbo a bit, I’m working on publishing the book at the moment and I’m hoping someone will give me a job.