David Chidlow
Introduction
David Chidlow is a former teacher of business studies and economics at Maidstone Grammar School in Kent who was prohibited from teaching indefinitely after admitting he accessed the adult website Adultwork.com on his school laptop while simultaneously teaching live lessons over Microsoft Teams — and then deleted his browser history to hide it. The school’s monitoring software, hunting an entirely different problem, caught him. He admitted everything in a signed statement of agreed facts, and on 31 August 2022 decision maker Sarah Buxcey banned him with no review period and no entitlement to apply for restoration, citing the dishonesty, the safeguarding risk and his lack of remorse.
Background Information
Chidlow had taught at the grammar school since 7 September 2018, delivering GCSE and A-level classes. The school issued laptops to staff under monitoring and acceptable-use policies he had signed. On 26 February 2021 the school’s monitoring software flagged the keywords “I take my life” appearing from a staff member’s school device — a safeguarding tripwire that triggered an investigation into the device’s user. The investigation found the user was Chidlow, but not for the reason the alert anticipated: remote, covert monitoring of his laptop on 26 February and 1 March 2021 recorded him accessing Adultwork.com, an adult services website, on his school machine. The monitoring captured screenshots of the sites and material he was viewing. At the time, he was responsible for teaching a class via MS Teams.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Admitted: adult-site browsing during live lessons, then deleting the history. Chidlow admitted he “flicked” between his live Teams lesson and the adult website, and that he deleted the site from his internet history on both days in an attempt to conceal what he had accessed — dishonesty the panel found proved.
The monitoring recorded the mechanics precisely: during lessons he switched back and forth between the Teams window and Adultwork.com, engaging in “sex chats” on the site while responsible for the class on screen. On both 26 February and 1 March 2021 he then deleted the website from his internet history — the act the panel found crossed from misconduct into deliberate concealment. The investigation led to a formal disciplinary process that recommended he be summarily dismissed for gross misconduct, and his employment ended on 31 May 2021. Chidlow admitted all four allegations — accessing pornographic material and sex chats on the school laptop, doing so while teaching a live lesson, deleting his internet history to conceal it, and dishonesty — in a statement of agreed facts signed on 9 March 2022. The panel considered the case at a meeting without a hearing on 24 August 2022. He said he had not deliberately shared any inappropriate material with pupils, and the panel found there was no evidence before it that any material was shared by him.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The panel’s safeguarding analysis centred on proximity: by flicking between a live school lesson and an adult website, Chidlow “could easily have inadvertently shared pornographic material with pupils” — and had that happened, he would have had no control over which pupils saw it, or which family members, including children, saw it afterward on shared screens. It found his behaviour a serious safeguarding risk and a breach of the Keeping Children Safe in Education statutory guidance as well as the school’s own signed policies. On insight, the panel gave some credit — but found no evidence of remorse “in respect of either the pupils, the School or the teaching profession”, and concluded the near-total absence of mitigation left it without confidence that the risk of repetition had been reduced. The dishonesty finding carried particular weight at the sanction stage, the published advice treating serious dishonesty as a behaviour that can remove any entitlement to a review period.
Current Status
Chidlow is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. Buxcey adopted the panel’s recommendation of no review period, citing the seriousness of the case, the safeguarding risk, the dishonesty found and the lack of remorse, and decided he shall not be entitled to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach — the order has no review route at all. It took effect from service, subject to a 28-day right of appeal to the High Court. The determination was dated 24 August 2022 and the order 31 August 2022, concluding a regulatory process that began with the February 2021 keyword alert; his employment had already ended on 31 May 2021.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The case is a warning shot for the remote-teaching era: the misconduct was only possible because live-streamed lessons left a teacher alone with a screen, and only detectable because the same corporate monitoring that watches pupils’ safeguarding signals watches staff devices too — here, a self-harm keyword alert meant to protect one person surfaced another’s entirely different secret. The deletion of browser history, a reflex in most contexts, was treated by the regulator as the decisive aggravator, converting a serious-but-bounded lapse into dishonesty warranting a no-review ban. The decision leaves open the underlying welfare question the keyword flag raised; the published record shows the alert, the pivot to the adult-site findings, and a career of under three years at the school brought to an end.