Ms Cathryn Williams

Introduction

Ms Cathryn Williams was a geography teacher at Uplands Academy in East Sussex, formerly Uplands Community College, where she began work on 13 June 2022. A professional conduct panel of the Teaching Regulation Agency found that, while employed there, she exchanged inappropriate and over-familiar WhatsApp messages with a pupil at her previous school, arranged to meet that pupil, and failed to report her safeguarding concerns about the child to the Designated Safeguarding Lead. She also answered ‘no’ to safeguarding questions on a job application when the answers should have been ‘yes’, though the panel found she was neither dishonest nor lacking integrity in doing so. On 8 July 2024 Marc Cavey, deciding on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education, prohibited her from teaching indefinitely with a two-year review period.

Background Information

Ms Williams had previously worked at Hastings Academy, part of the University of Brighton Academies Trust. There she received a formal letter of concern on 13 July 2021, relating to two incidents, and an informal letter on 21 October 2021 about a delayed report of a pupil’s disclosure. The panel made no findings about those underlying incidents but found that they related to the safety and welfare of children and that two referrals about them to the Local Authority Designated Officer had been found substantiated. She resigned from Hastings Academy on 19 May 2022. Her panel convened on 1 to 4 July 2024 by way of a virtual hearing in public, save for parts heard in private. She was present for the first three days, was not represented, cross-examined the TRA’s witnesses and made a closing statement, then did not attend on 4 July, having waived her right to be present. The date of determination is 4 July 2024.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

On or around 8 April 2022, while still at Hastings Academy and under what she described as immense pressure, Ms Williams completed a job application for Beacon Academy, later passed with her consent to Uplands. She answered ‘no’ to whether she had ever been the subject of allegations relating to the safety and welfare of children, and ‘no’ to whether she had an unexpired misconduct warning. She admitted the first answer was incorrect; she denied the second. The panel found both answers proven anyway: the formal letter of concern constituted a ‘lesser warning’ that would remain on her personnel file indefinitely, while her ‘no’ was correct so far as the informal letter was concerned. Although she had admitted allegation 5 in the agreed facts, the panel found neither dishonesty nor lack of integrity proved. Applying the framework from Ivey v Genting Casinos, it accepted her explanation — that she treated the questions as tick-box answers about criminal records, acted hastily and did not pay the form due care and attention — as ‘compelling and forthcoming’, and held that the requirement for integrity does not require teachers to be ‘paragons of virtue’.

The concealment pattern that proved decisive concerned Pupil A, a pupil at Hastings Academy. Between around June and October 2022, Ms Williams exchanged private WhatsApp messages with her — inappropriate in themselves, and over-familiar in using swear words and friendly content. She then arranged to meet the pupil on or around 28 October 2022, buying tickets and proposing to collect her from Hastings, before switching to a plan to bring her dogs so the meeting could ‘appear happenchance’, telling the pupil: ‘I’m worried she’d make trouble if she knew it was me.’ When the pupil said her mother tracked her phone, Ms Williams encouraged concealment from Mother A. The mother discovered the arrangement on 27 October 2022 by checking the phone; allegations arose on 3 November 2022, a LADO referral followed, and Ms Williams was suspended on 7 November 2022. Allegations 2, 3 and 4 — including that she did not report her concerns to the Designated Safeguarding Lead at all during that period — were proven; she had accepted she reported her concerns about Pupil A to no one.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel found allegations 2, 3 and 4 amounted to both unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, involving breaches of the Teachers’ Standards and of Keeping children safe in education. It considered her conduct in encouraging a pupil to keep their correspondence and possible meeting hidden from her mother ‘particularly harmful to the public trust and confidence in the teaching profession’, observing that no parent would expect a teacher to be privately messaging their child and encouraging the child to deceive them. Her failure to report portrayed ‘a complete lack of understanding of the holistic nature of safeguarding’, and it was ‘entirely unacceptable’ for her to withhold genuinely held safeguarding concerns out of a misguided sense that she alone could help. Uplands Academy referred the matter to the TRA on 10 August 2023.

Current Status

The decision maker, Marc Cavey, decided on 8 July 2024 that Ms Cathryn Williams is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. He endorsed the panel’s view that ‘whilst Ms Williams showed significant remorse, this did not equate to showing meaningful insight and understanding into the nature and gravity of her conduct’, and judged that ‘the lack of insight demonstrated by Ms Williams means that there is some risk of the repetition of this behaviour and this puts at risk the future wellbeing of pupils’. She may apply for the prohibition order to be set aside, but not until 11 July 2026, two years from the date of the order, at the earliest — not an automatic right. The order takes effect from the date it is served, with a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The bar ends a teaching career that had lasted barely a year at Uplands after the resignation from Hastings Academy, and her dismissal there preceded the TRA referral. Unlike orders with no review, hers can in principle be revisited after July 2026, but the panel was ‘not entirely satisfied that the risk of recurrence had been reduced to an acceptable level’ despite recent boundary and safeguarding training undertaken outside the education sector, and Cavey found the two-year period sufficient only because of the lack of evidence that she had yet attained full insight. Any future application would need to demonstrate understanding she was judged to lack: that withholding concerns cut Pupil A off from the full safeguarding protections available, and that forcing the child to keep the relationship concealed carried its own burden and risk to wellbeing.

Sources

• Teaching Regulation Agency, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Ms Cathryn Williams” — source