Craig Embrey

Introduction

Craig Embrey is a former business studies teacher at Connell Co-op College in Manchester who was prohibited from teaching indefinitely after being convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for headbutting a sixteen-year-old stranger in public — an assault that split the teenager’s lip and required three stitches, and that Embrey committed while drinking, having “panicked and felt threatened”, in the sentencing court’s own account of his state of mind. The case is the batch’s outlier in one respect: the panel found genuine insight, remorse and a low risk of repetition, and banned him anyway, with a three-year review period set by decision maker Sarah Buxcey on 15 March 2023.

Background Information

Embrey joined Connell Co-op College in August 2017 as a business studies teacher. On 18 January 2020 he headbutted Person A, who was sixteen and unknown to him, in the face, in public; Embrey was interviewed by police the next day, and notified the college of the charge on 24 March 2020. The college suspended him on 15 May 2020 and opened a disciplinary investigation that held its hearing on 11 November 2020. On 10 June 2021, on his own guilty plea, he was convicted at Liverpool Crown Court of assault occasioning actual bodily harm contrary to section 47 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, and was sentenced on 5 July 2021 to a nine-month community order with ninety hours’ unpaid work, a rehabilitation activity requirement, £900 compensation to the victim, a £95 victim surcharge and £300 in costs. The regulatory panel noted a discrepancy between the conviction certificate’s date, 10 June 2021, and the police record’s 5 July 2021, and amended the allegation to include the words “or around” before the date.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted and admitted. Embrey admitted the facts, the conviction and its regulatory relevance in a signed statement of agreed facts, and the panel accepted the certificate of conviction as conclusive proof. The findings rest on a criminal conviction; the aggravation and mitigation below are the panel’s own assessment.

The panel accepted the certificate as conclusive and turned to what the offence said about fitness to teach: the victim’s age — “under eighteen” — was an aggravating feature, as was the public setting and the fact that a teacher holds a role-model duty in and out of the classroom. Against that it weighed mitigation it found real: full participation in the regulatory process with full admissions, a guilty plea in the criminal proceedings, sentencing-remarks evidence that he had panicked and felt threatened immediately beforehand, and “clear regret and remorse” with an apology and some insight into the shortfall in his conduct. The aggravation still controlled the outcome — the panel was not satisfied he acted under duress, noted he chose to leave his home and put himself in the situation while, in the court’s finding, affected by alcohol, and held the offence deliberate even if impulsive in the moment. Prohibition followed, on a panel opinion that recognised “an isolated episode in the context of Mr Embrey’s life and career as a whole” but concluded the conduct was too serious for publication of findings alone.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The college’s handling ran on its own clock and is fully documented: notification of charge in March 2020, suspension in May, a disciplinary hearing that November — all before the criminal courts reached a verdict. There is no recorded public statement from the college, and the victim’s identity and account are confined to the redacted regulatory record. The panel gave weight to his otherwise good record — his competence was never called into question — but found no testimonials of exceptionally high standards or significant contribution, and judged the public interest in standards to outweigh retention.

Current Status

Embrey is prohibited from teaching indefinitely with effect from service of the 15 March 2023 order. The panel recommended a three-year review period, deliberately longer than the two-year minimum, because the violent act was “a headbutt, in public, against a victim who was under eighteen”; Buxcey adopted that reasoning and set the earliest possible application at 21 March 2026, stressing that an application is not an automatic right. Without a successful application he remains barred from teaching in any school, sixth-form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Embrey’s is the file’s cleanest illustration that the regulator bans on conviction, not on character: one street assault, no pupils involved, no pattern, admitted early and remorsefully, from a teacher whose competence was never questioned — and the ban issued anyway, because the Advice treats offences of violence as presumptively incompatible with the profession. His route back, if any, runs through a fresh panel after March 2026 that will weigh the same remorse the first panel already credited. The decision leaves the victim’s three stitches and £900 compensation as the human ledger beneath a regulatory file mostly about proportionality.

Sources

• Teaching Regulation Agency (GOV.UK), “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Craig Embrey,” Mar 15, 2023 — source