Jon Axl Rivers

Introduction

Jon Axl Rivers is a former science teacher, previously known as Dr Abbott, who has been banned from teaching indefinitely after a Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found he stored a meat cleaver in an unlocked classroom desk drawer and then answered falsely when asked about allegations on a job application. The panel found all three allegations proved after a fully contested hearing, finding his false answer dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people. On 26 March 2024, decision maker David Oatley, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, prohibited him from teaching indefinitely.

Background Information

Rivers joined Mildenhall College as a newly qualified teacher in June 2012, while known as Dr Abbott; the college became Mildenhall College Academy in 2013. Between November 2012 and October 2014 he was invited to fact-finding meetings at the Academy relating to allegations about his conduct. He left the Academy on 1 September 2016, taught at Glyn High School, Ravensbourne School, Chelsea Academy and Bacon’s College between 2017 and 2019, and joined The Green School for Girls in Isleworth in September 2019. The School referred him to the TRA in September 2020.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Contested across six hearing days; dishonesty found under Ivey. Rivers denied all three allegations and appeared in person, unrepresented, at a public hearing across Coventry, London and Microsoft Teams between January and March 2024. No criminal proceedings were before the panel, which decided the case on the balance of probabilities.

The first allegation concerned a meat cleaver. On 23 October 2014, while Rivers was absent from the Academy, colleagues covering his lessons found the blade in the unlocked drawer of his classroom desk. A pupil had remarked that Dr Rivers used a “machete” to hurry pupils through their work, prompting the cover teachers to open the drawer. The find was reported to the local authority’s LADO the same day, and LADO strategy meetings followed in 2015 and 2016.

Rivers did not dispute bringing a bladed article to school but said it was a six-inch vegetable chopper, a tool of his profession, used to teach the “jam sandwich method” — a lesson in which pupils wrote instructions for making a jam sandwich and he acted them out with bladed implements — and suggested the cleaver had been planted. The panel rejected that account: in a November 2014 interview he had called the item a meat cleaver and said he stored it in the desk drawer, and pupils and staff described him displaying the cleaver in lessons while telling the class to be quiet, chopping it down onto his desk. The science department kept bladed items risk-assessed and stored by technicians, and no permission for a cleaver existed. The panel concluded it was patently inappropriate and dangerous to store a bladed item in an unlocked classroom drawer and found allegation 1 proved.

The second allegation concerned his 5 May 2019 application to The Green School for Girls, on which he answered “no” to the question “have you been the subject of any disciplinary action in your current or previous position or had any allegations made”. The panel found the answer was untrue: he had faced the meat-cleaver allegation, Academy investigations and four LADO strategy meetings between 2015 and 2016, plus further allegations between 2016 and 2018 — matters that should have been disclosed. Rivers argued that “allegations” meant only formal disciplinary allegations; the panel gave the word its ordinary English meaning. In cross-examination he admitted spending two or three days considering whether to disclose, and said no school would have employed him had he done so. Applying the Ivey test, the panel found he had consciously chosen not to disclose because disclosure would reduce his chance of employment — dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people — and that he lacked integrity, having deprived the School of the chance to consider his history. Allegations 2 and 3 were found proved accordingly.

Rivers fought the case hard: he arrived with a 625-page exhibit bundle, a 315-page defence case submission and interview footage on CD-ROMs, and filed applications seeking discontinuance that alleged bad faith by the TRA. The panel refused all five discontinuance applications and granted him reasonable adjustments before finding the allegations proved.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel found the conduct amounted to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute. It found his actions deliberate and made without duress, and the dishonesty calculated and motivated conduct for personal gain. It found a consistent lack of insight and remorse and limited self-reflection: he would not store a bladed article in a school now only to protect himself, because regulations had changed, not from appreciating the seriousness of his conduct. Serious dishonesty weighs in favour of a longer wait before review, and the panel was concerned about the risk of repetition, not being satisfied he would provide full, frank and open disclosures on future job applications. Concluding that his conduct sat at the more serious end of the spectrum, it recommended prohibition with immediate effect and a five-year review period.

Current Status

David Oatley, deciding on behalf of the Secretary of State, issued his decision on 26 March 2024; the panel’s determination was dated 22 March 2024. Rivers is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. He may apply for the prohibition order to be set aside, but not until 4 April 2029 at the earliest — five years from the date of the order — and this is not an automatic right: a panel would consider any application, and without success he remains prohibited indefinitely. He has a right of appeal to the King’s Bench Division of the High Court within 28 days of being given notice of the order.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The prohibition order ends a teaching career that ran from Mildenhall College in 2012 to The Green School for Girls, taking in four other schools. It bars him from every classroom role in English schools and related settings, and its indefinite term never lapses of its own accord. With the panel finding calculated dishonesty for personal gain, the published decision is a permanent public record, and the route back — no earlier than 4 April 2029 — is neither automatic nor assured.

Sources

• Department for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Dr Jon Axl Rivers” — source