Two Teachers Struck Off Over Fight They Encouraged at School
Two teachers have been banned from the profession after a misconduct panel found they encouraged two pupils to fight and failed to safeguard them. Adrian Ferguson, 56, and Richard Lewis, 47, were struck off earlier this month, according to a Teaching Regulation Agency report.
The incident happened on 21 October 2019 at Peak Academy in Dursley, Gloucestershire, a school for pupils aged 11 to 16 with special educational needs. Lewis was the principal at the time and Ferguson taught science.
How the fight started
The report says a "flare up" between the two pupils at lunchtime led staff to separate them. Pupil A went to a sensory room called "basecamp". Pupil B was told to take a walk to "help him regulate".
Pupil B could not calm down and said he wanted to speak to Pupil A. Lewis agreed to take him to the basecamp room and said "let's get this sorted".
CCTV showed Lewis put his hand behind Pupil B's back and say something just before Pupil B attacked. The footage had no audio, so the panel concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that Lewis said something like "fight it out".
The two men then stood outside the door and watched for more than 20 seconds. They were "smiling and laughing", the report says. One pupil punched the other in the head nine or 10 times before anyone stepped in. The panel called it "good fortune" that nobody was injured.
After the pupils were separated, Ferguson took Pupil A away but did not remove him from the room, and a further physical fight followed. Pupil A later told police that Ferguson had tried to "fist bump him after the fight to say well done".
The panel's findings
During the school's own investigation, Lewis said he had not stopped the fight sooner because he was making a "dynamic risk assessment" and waiting for a "natural lull in the scuffle". Both men later admitted they should have intervened earlier.
The panel found that their conduct "fell significantly short of the standard of behaviour expected of a teacher" and found both guilty of unacceptable professional conduct. It said: "The panel considered that ordinary members of the public would be shocked to learn that an experienced, senior teacher had allowed, and encouraged, pupils to engage in a fight."
Police opened an investigation, but the Crown Prosecution Service discontinued it in February 2021. Ferguson had left the school on 31 December 2019, after handing in his notice before the incident took place.
Source: BBC News