Christopher Pickup
Introduction
Christopher Pickup is a retired teacher and former headteacher whose career in Oldham schools ended more than four decades before his name returned to the public record — as a convicted sex offender. In August 2022, after a trial at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, he was convicted of approximately 37 counts of indecent assault on boys under 14 and sentenced to a total of ten years’ imprisonment, with an indefinite sex-offender register order. In November 2025 a Teaching Regulation Agency professional conduct panel found the allegation of a conviction for a relevant offence proved, and the decision maker prohibited him from teaching indefinitely with no entitlement ever to apply for restoration. He did not attend the hearing and was not represented.
Background Information
Pickup, born 14 April 1946, taught at St Martin’s Church of England School in Fitton Hill, Oldham in the early 1970s and served as head teacher of St Paul’s Church of England School in Royton, Oldham in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In August 2019 a former pupil alleged that Pickup had sexually assaulted him on multiple occasions when the former pupil was 8 or 9 years old. Other former pupils came forward with similar accounts. In March 2023, according to the published decision, Pickup accepted that he had been convicted but continued to maintain his innocence of the offences.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings below rest on a criminal conviction recorded at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court on 10 August 2022, which the panel accepted the certificate of conviction proved conclusively, together with the facts necessarily implied by it. Pickup was acquitted of nothing at that trial — he was convicted after pleading not guilty — but he has maintained his innocence, and that claim of innocence remains his own position, untested on appeal in the published record.
The allegations involved sexual touching of boys’ genitalia over their clothing, generally in the presence of other boys and on school premises or during school trips; on occasion the touching took place while Pickup was administering corporal punishment. The victims were all of a similar age when the assaults took place. Pickup was interviewed by police, denied all allegations, was charged with multiple offences of indecent assault of boys under 14, pleaded not guilty, and was convicted by a jury on 10 August 2022 of approximately 37 counts. He was sentenced to a total of ten years’ imprisonment and ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely. The panel described the offences as a gross breach of trust, committed against multiple pupils at two different schools including while he was teaching them, and noted it had received evidence of the adverse impact on his victims’ wellbeing.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The published decision documents the criminal and regulatory consequences rather than public debate. The sentence and the indefinite register entry were, in the panel’s words, “indicative of the seriousness of the offences committed”, and it found public confidence in the teaching profession would be seriously weakened if conduct of this kind were not treated with the utmost seriousness. It recorded that the offending caused significant and long-term harm to pupils, and that Pickup — who was still serving his sentence at the time of the 2025 hearing — had shown no insight or remorse for his actions. Because his offending spanned a long period and multiple pupils at two schools, the panel found the only mitigating factor it identified, the absence of other findings against him, provided very little mitigation.
Current Status
Pickup is serving a ten-year prison sentence imposed in August 2022 and is on the sex offenders register indefinitely. On 12 November 2025 the TRA panel found the allegation of a conviction for a relevant offence proved on the certificate of conviction, and the decision maker, Sarah Buxcey, prohibited him from teaching indefinitely on 17 November 2025. The order carries no review period: the decision states that offences of such seriousness require permanent exclusion from the profession, citing the seriousness of the conviction, the lack of evidence of insight or remorse, and the risk of repetition. He was judged not entitled to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach. The order takes effect when served; he has a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days of notice.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The prohibition formally ends a teaching career that had already been over for roughly four decades, but its terms remove any possibility of return: an indefinite ban across every school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation and children’s home in England, with no review period and no entitlement to apply for restoration. The panel found no public interest in retaining him in the profession — he had ceased teaching more than 40 years earlier and there was no evidence of any positive contribution to make to teaching. His name now sits on both the sex-offender register and the Teaching Regulation Agency’s prohibited-teachers list, the latter permanent unless the decision were successfully challenged in the High Court.