The majority of sex abuse allegations made against teachers are 'made up by pupils', according to the chief of Britain's biggest teaching union.

Kevin Courtney, the joint secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), revealed that while some complaints were correct, most are found to be incorrect after an investigation.

He also claims that pupils who misbehave in class often made spurious complaints to 'get an effect'.

Kevin Courtney said most complaints are found to be incorrect after an investigation

Mr Courtney acknowledged that some of the complaints are correct and 'accusations should be taken seriously'.

Speaking to The Telegraph, he said: 'You should take the accusation seriously. You should investigate and we should tell children that it is safe to make an accusation so then the ones that are true get made. But you can't say that you will believe every accusation that a child makes, because we have many cases where children who are misbehaving are street smart enough to know.

He explained that a child can 'get an effect' by making an accusation and getting a teacher suspended, adding teachers are sometimes suspended before there has been any check at all.

Mr Courtney also called for falsely accused teachers to have the allegations removed from their criminal records.

Referring to a recent case that was dealt with by the NEU, he said: 'The mum of the girl who made the accusation came forward and said, 'I know she made it up'.

'This is on [the teacher's] extended CRB check. This comes up every time he goes to a new school. And yet there was never anything found against him – it was only ever the accusation.'

The Education Act 2011 gave teachers the right to automatic anonymity when accused of criminal offences.

Despite this, schools generally have their own individual suspension procedures.

However, Mr Courtney said there is a preliminary stage when somebody has a sense check of whether this could have happened or not.

He explained that 'no names should be released before that preliminary common sense check'.

He said that Government guidance states 'the default position should be to assume the teacher has behaved reasonably unless a complainant can show that a teacher has behaved unreasonably'.

He added the act also 'gives head teachers the power to temporarily or permanently exclude pupils who make false allegation's, or even 'press criminal charges against the pupil in extreme circumstances'.

According to research carried out by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in 2015, more than 22 per cent of school and college staff have had false allegations made against them by a pupil.

Study also found that 14 per cent of allegations against staff was made by a pupil's parent or family member.