Corinne Culver

Introduction

Corinne Culver taught at Tiger Primary School in Kent from September 2017 until March 2019, when colleagues described seeing her hold a young pupil up in the air by the wrist with her feet off the floor, drag children by the hand and wrist, and lift a girl from behind with both arms around her chest. A Teaching Regulation Agency panel found the force allegations, her failure to record physical interventions, and her shouted remarks about pupils proved in May 2022. She was not present and was not represented. Having resigned in March 2019 as the school’s disciplinary process began, she faced the regulator alone: on 23 May 2022 decision maker Sarah Buxcey banned her from teaching for life, with a two-year review period.

Background Information

Culver’s alleged conduct clustered between November 2018 and February 2019 at Tiger Primary School. A staff member described hearing a child screaming in Culver’s classroom in winter 2018 and arriving to find her holding Pupil A by the wrist, up in the air — the grip “tight and forceful”, the girl’s feet a forearm’s length off the floor for the whole conversation. The same witness described a December 2018 incident in which Culver dragged Pupil A by the wrist out of a classroom to the carpet in the hall, her feet not touching the floor, shouting at her. On or around 23 January 2019 she was found to have lifted and carried Pupil A with both arms around her chest from behind. She was found to have dragged Pupil D by the hand and wrist to remove him from the bathroom, to have hit her head on a door frame while being dragged from a classroom, and to have failed to record any of this use of force on the school’s systems as its policies required.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Found to have used unreasonable force on young pupils — held aloft by the wrist, dragged, lifted from behind — then failed to record it and shouted insults about children in front of them; banned.

The panel also found proved a set of shouted and overheard remarks: “get her/him away from me”; “I can’t do this” and “I’ve had enough”; and, of Pupil C, “she’s been a right brat”. Culver resigned from her post on 15 March 2019, a disciplinary hearing was held on 19 March, and the school referred her to the TRA on 26 March 2019. At the hearing in May 2022 — convened remotely — she was neither present nor represented, and the panel decided it was in the public interest to proceed. It found the particulars of allegations 1(a) to 1(d), allegation 2 and allegations 3(a) to 3(c) proved on the oral and written evidence of staff members. It rejected any suggestion the conduct was other than deliberate, and noted it had been provided with no evidence that she had contributed significantly to the education sector.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel found the misconduct serious — breaches of the Teachers’ Standards on treating pupils with dignity, safeguarding pupils’ well-being, and acting within statutory frameworks — but located it at the less serious end of the spectrum for this class of conduct, and recommended prohibition with a two-year review period rather than the no-review structure. Buxcey agreed prohibition was proportionate and in the public interest, and adopted the panel’s two-year review. The decision records the reasoning: her conduct involved the use of unreasonable force, inappropriate physical contact and inappropriate comments towards or in the presence of pupils, and publication of the findings alone, not backed by full insight, could not satisfy the public interest requirement concerning public confidence in the profession. The school’s own process had already run its course four years earlier — resignation, disciplinary hearing, referral — leaving the ban as the final layer.

Current Status

Culver is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. The order carries a two-year review period: she may apply for the prohibition to be set aside, but not until 7 June 2024 at the earliest, and this is not an automatic right — a fresh panel would decide whether the order should lift. The order took effect from service on her. Her teaching record at the school ended with the March 2019 resignation, before any of the findings were made, and the regulator’s published decision now carries the witness accounts of the lifting, the dragging and the shouted remarks in full.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case sits in the register as the primary-sector force case that turned on colleagues’ contemporaneous accounts rather than on any criminal process: no police involvement appears in the decision, and the proof was the screaming child heard from the corridor, the feet off the floor, the door-frame impact, and the unlogged interventions. The failure to record the force on school systems became its own proved allegation — the administrative erasure treated as part of the misconduct, not an oversight beside it. The two-year review period reflects the panel’s calibration: deliberate conduct at the lower end of seriousness still ends a career, but with a route back after two years if a panel is later persuaded. For primary schools, the decision documents the referral timeline from resignation to TRA inside eleven days.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Ms Corinne Culver” — source