A Home Office investigation has found that an adult asylum seeker posed as a schoolboy and was placed in a classroom of 15-year-olds.

A new inquiry has been launched to try to establish how the man, described by pupils as looking 30 years old, managed to spend six weeks as a Year 11 pupil at Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk.

The former pupil, originally from the Middle East, now faces being deported after the official report established he was over 18.

The man, known as Siavash, can now be identified for the first time. He was first pictured on social media by a fellow pupil with the message: “How’s there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?”

Other pictures apparently from the man’s Facebook account showed him with a moustache, facial stubble and drinking from a bottle of beer.

Some parents were so concerned that they removed their children from school. The scandal prompted the school to remove the man, believed to be 6ft 1ins tall.