Two teachers suspended after tying up pupil with electrical cable during lesson

The pupil, who has a heart defect, was bound hand and foot with electrical cable during an engineering class and his 'happy slapping'-style ordeal recorded on another pupil's mobile phone.

During the footage, a voice - said to be one of the two teachers who tied him up - can be heard cruelly taunting: "Give us a shout when you are ready to start grovelling."

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He was eventually freed by another teacher.

The boy was said to have been too traumatised and ashamed to tell his parents about the "prank".

The authorities were alerted eight days later only after senior staff at the Folkestone Academy in Kent saw the footage.

The teachers who tied up the boy were immediately suspended from the flagship school. Police and social services are also investigating the incident, which happened on November 28.

A source at the school said: "It was like something you would expect Guantanamo Bay or an Al Qaeda video - not in a school.

"The lad involved is an easy target for bullies and he takes more than his fair share of stick.

"The school has made a lot of noise about being tough on bullies and raising standards and this kind of thing just makes a mockery of that."

The boy was still too shocked to discuss the incident yesterday. But a family friend said: "He's taken the whole thing really badly. It's shaken him up terribly.

"His parents have been really pushing for some action to be taken on this, but he just wants to the whole thing to go away as he fears being bullied even more."

Folkestone Academy - whose motto is Providing Excellence for Pupils of all Abilities - is one of Labour's pioneering city academies, which are part-funded by business and are intended to replace failing schools.

In a letter to parents, John Patterson, headmaster of the £38million, 1,000-pupil school, said: "Although this incident may have been intended to be good-humoured, the academy sees the alleged behaviour as totally inappropriate and unacceptable within a school."

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The two teachers will face a disciplinary hearing at the school in the New Year at which it will be decided whether they should be sacked or face lesser sanctions.

Folkestone Academy bills itself as a centre of arts, media and culture and its futuristic building was designed by the leading architect Sir Norman Foster.

It is part-funded by Roger de Haan, the billionaire former chief of Saga.

After the school opened this September, more than 100 pupils were excluded in three weeks, mainly for using abusive language.