Dan Boulton

Introduction

Dan Boulton taught at Brine Leas County High School in Cheshire from 2003. In November 2022 a Teaching Regulation Agency professional conduct panel found proved that between March and December 2015 he engaged in a sexual relationship with a pupil — a sixth-form student who had been at the school in the 2014-15 academic year — and that he made inappropriate remarks including telling a group of pupils that “bisexual people are just greedy” during a PSHE lesson and telling a colleague “I fucking hate her, I hope she dies of a brain haemorrhage” about a pupil. Boulton admitted every allegation in a signed statement of agreed facts, accepted full responsibility, and the case was decided without a hearing at his request. No criminal charge was ever brought over the relationship. Decision maker Sarah Buxcey banned him from teaching for life with no review period and no entitlement to apply for restoration.

Background Information

The relationship emerged years after it ended. An anonymous caller told the school in June 2018 that Boulton had been involved in a sexual relationship with a former pupil; a referral was made to the local authority designated officer on 7 June 2018 and to Cheshire Police on 15 June 2018. Pupil A did not provide a statement to the panel, but the decision records that she was interviewed by Cheshire Police and confirmed a sexual relationship of approximately one year while she was a pupil at the school. Boulton’s own admissions filled in the timeline: the relationship commenced in December 2014, became sexual in March 2015, and ended in December 2015; Pupil A visited his house; and the two agreed from the outset not to make the relationship common knowledge until after she left the school. The remarks allegations surfaced separately — he received a verbal warning in March 2018 for the PSHE comment, and a staff grievance in June 2018 concerned the colleague remark. A disciplinary hearing was held on 1 October 2018, and he ceased employment at the school the following day, the same day the matter was referred to the TRA.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Admitted a year-long sexual relationship with a sixth-form pupil; no criminal charge; banned for life on his own admissions. Boulton admitted the relationship, the classroom remark and the colleague remark in full, accepting he was in a position of responsibility and should not have allowed it to continue.

The panel found all four allegations proved, on his admissions and the surrounding evidence. It found the conduct associated with the Advice’s listed offence of sexual activity, though it stressed there had been no conviction — the finding rested on his admission and the police interview record. On the PSHE remark, the panel noted it was made in a classroom in front of pupils, some of whom identified as LGBT, and that parents were likely to have learned of it from them. The colleague remark it judged ill-advised and unprofessional but not, in isolation, unacceptable professional conduct, being made in a private conversation — though it formed part of the dignity finding overall. Boulton told the TRA in June 2022 that he was deeply sorry for his remarks and said they were an attempt at humour; the panel did not consider this mitigated the offences. The panel treated the concealment agreement — keeping the relationship secret until the pupil left school — as part of the boundary breach, alongside the visits to his house.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel found a strong public interest in pupil protection given what it called the serious finding of an inappropriate relationship with a pupil, and held that public confidence could be seriously weakened if such conduct were not treated with the utmost seriousness. The headteacher’s internal comments that Boulton had “made a difference” and that his department had “done well” were noted by the panel but given no mitigating weight, since no statement to that effect was formally submitted. Buxcey placed considerable weight on the sexual-relationship finding and on the panel’s view that prohibition was both proportionate and appropriate, concluding that a published decision alone would not satisfy the public interest. The published decision is the case’s main public record: the police investigation ended without prosecution, and neither the relationship nor the ban attracted press coverage, leaving the TRA decision as the only public account.

Current Status

Boulton is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. Buxcey decided he shall not be entitled to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach, so the order has no review date — the panel having found that serious sexual misconduct involving a child militates against one. The order takes effect from service, with a right of appeal to the King’s Bench Division of the High Court within 28 days of notice. The panel’s determination is dated 7 November 2022, with Buxcey’s order dated 10 November 2022. No criminal proceedings resulted from the police investigation into the relationship, and the regulatory outcome stands on his admissions alone — an important distinction the decision itself draws, since the ban rests on professional conduct findings rather than any conviction.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case shows the weight the regulator gives to admission without engagement: Boulton’s full acceptance of responsibility from the outset — the decision notes he took full responsibility from the start and admitted his position of trust — spared witnesses and the pupil any hearing, but changed nothing about the sanction tier. A fifteen-year career at a single school ended not through dismissal for the relationship itself, which surfaced only through an anonymous call three years after it ended, but through the combined record of the relationship and the two remark findings that preceded it on the school’s own disciplinary timeline. For schools, the case records how sixth-form status does not exempt a pupil from the boundary rules: the relationship was adjudicated entirely as an abuse of professional position. For Boulton, the absence of any criminal record coexists with the most severe regulatory outcome — a lifetime prohibition with no review — because the Advice’s review-period exclusions turn on the nature of the conduct found, not on whether a court ever sentenced it.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Dan Boulton” — source