A TEACHER who was accused of having sex with a 16-year-old pupil on a flight back from a school trip was a "bit of an attention seeker" who had a previous brush with the law.

Ellie Wilson, 29, was yesterday told she will not face a retrial over allegations she had sex with a student in the toilet of a plane as they returned from a trip to Swaziland in Africa.

Eleanor Wilson has found love with Josh Hawkins, pictured arriving at court togetherShe denied four charges of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust during a trial at Bristol Crown Court.

Jurors deliberated for three days but the case resulted in a hung jury last Wednesday when they failed to reach a majority verdict.

The Crown Prosecution Service yesterday announced it would not pursue a retrial after a case thought to have cost taxpayers tens of thousands of pounds.

Her friends described the York University graduate as someone who enjoyed being the centre of attention.

One told the Daily Mail: "She was really intelligent, but she was also flirty and an attention-seeker.

"She lost her best friends when she came on to the boyfriend of one of them, but she didn’t seem to care."

Her appearance at Bristol Crown Court was also not her first in a courtroom, local paper reports reveal.

In 2007, she pleaded guilty to driving without due care and attention when she knocked down a teaching assistant at school while looking for a parking space.

Miss Wilson, then aged 18, said it had been raining hard at the time and she had not seen the woman.

Skipton magistrates imposed six penalty points on her licence and fined her £100. She was also ordered to pay £45 costs and a £15 victims’ surcharge.

Eleven years later, she was back in court accused of having drink-fuelled sex with the teenager on a British Airways flight home from a camping trip in August 2015.

It was alleged the teacher, then aged 26, kissed and cuddled the boy before beckoning him into the toilet, where they allegedly had sex.

Miss Wilson insisted sex on the plane would have been "impossible" because she was wearing hiking boots and branded claims she pulled one leg of her trousers down to have sex as "like the description of a weird porn film".

After the trip to Swaziland, Miss Wilson was alleged to have had sexual contact with the boy on three further occasions — once in his bedroom after lunch at Nando’s and again on day trips the pair went on to Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire and Ashton Court Estate, a country park in Bristol.

She admitted seeing the pupil on these occasions and texting him "almost daily" over the summer, but said these meetings were innocent and because she had "no one else to turn to".

Jurors heard Miss Wilson discovered she was pregnant and went on to have an abortion, with prosecutors claiming the boy was the father.She said the baby actually belonged to her "on-off" boyfriend Andrew Hall, who dumped her because he was worried she was cheating on him.

Jurors were told the "clandestine" relationship was exposed months later when another pupil at the school tried to blackmail Miss Wilson into having sex with him.

Miss Wilson was banned indefinitely from teaching in July last year.

After the trial, her brother Jethro said of his sister: "I have spoken to her and she is very relieved."

She has now found love with Josh Hawkins, 27, with whom she has been in a relationship with since last year.

Mr Hawkins walked into Bristol Crown Court hand-in-hand with his new girlfriend on every day of her trial this month.

She is believed to have moved to Devon where she's training on Dartmoor with a view to joining the Royal Navy.