Joshua Adusei

Introduction

Joshua Adusei is a former teacher at Harris Academy Tottenham, banned from teaching for five years in May 2025 over his conduct during the January 2021 COVID lockdown — skipping the welfare calls he was supposed to make to his tutor group’s pupils, failing to teach scheduled online lessons, and encouraging pupils to support an online petition demanding the resignation of a colleague. The petition carried serious allegations against the colleague which the panel found untrue and/or misleading, and which Adusei had never raised through any proper channel. The case’s most serious strand was a safeguarding failure: a pupil posted alarming comments under Adusei’s public Twitter posts, and he took no adequate steps to protect them. The panel found every allegation proved, and the decision maker imposed a five-year review period on a teacher whose misconduct was entirely non-sexual — a dishonesty-and-safeguarding case, not an abuse case.

Background Information

Adusei taught at Harris Academy Tottenham, part of the Harris Federation multi-academy trust, during the period of the allegations. The conduct arose during the January 2021 national lockdown, when schools ran remote provision and tutors were required to make regular welfare calls to pupils in their tutor groups — checks on children confined to home during the third national lockdown, some of them in difficult home circumstances. The petition incident followed in April 2021, by which point pupils had returned to school premises. The decision records that Adusei made no admission of fact in respect of any allegation; the case was contested and resolved against him on the evidence. The panel that heard it was chaired by a former teacher panellist, with the TRA represented by presenting officer, in a hearing the decision records as contested.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Allegations. The findings below come from a TRA professional conduct panel, which found the allegations proved on the balance of probabilities. They were never admitted by Adusei and never adjudicated in court; no criminal charge arises from the conduct. The findings below stand as the panel’s determinations on the civil standard.

In the week of 4-8 January 2021, during lockdown, Adusei did not complete the welfare calls owed to the pupils in his tutor group, and did not tell his Head of Year that the calls were not being made until the evening of 7 January — leaving the school for days unaware whether vulnerable children were safe at home. He also missed online lessons scheduled for around 15 and 20 January 2021. In April 2021, he encouraged pupils to support an online petition seeking the resignation of a colleague — speaking to pupils about it during school hours and on school premises, and engaging with them about it on social media. The panel found the petition made one or more serious allegations against the colleague that were untrue and/or misleading, and that Adusei had never raised any such concern through the school or the Harris Federation’s proper channels before taking it to the pupils themselves. Most seriously, in or around 21 April 2021, a pupil posted comments in response to Adusei’s public Twitter posts — comments set out in a redacted schedule to the allegations that indicated the pupil needed safeguarding — and the panel found he failed to take any, or any adequate, steps to safeguard that pupil afterward.

The panel’s decision ran to detailed findings on each strand, and its recommendation records particular concern at the “repeated” nature of his failures — the phrase the decision maker later quoted in adopting the sanction. The conduct was assessed as unacceptable professional conduct: a teacher who uses pupils as leverage in a staff dispute, misleads no one but himself about his duties to check on children’s welfare during a lockdown, and ignores safeguarding signals on his own social media falls significantly short of the standards the profession requires. The petition strand carried the dishonesty flavour of the case: the panel found the petition’s allegations against the colleague untrue and/or misleading and found Adusei had bypassed every proper route for raising staff concerns, enlisting children in a campaign instead.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The decision records no press coverage; the consequences were professional, not public. The school’s referral led to a contested TRA hearing at which Adusei faced the findings and lost on every allegation. The case stands in the recent TRA record as a rarer species — a misconduct case with no sexual element, no conviction, and no victim in the conventional sense, but with safeguarding failures at its core that the panel treated with corresponding seriousness. For the colleague targeted by the petition, the panel’s finding that the petition’s serious allegations were untrue and/or misleading is itself a public vindication on the record. The pupils affected by the missed welfare calls were, in the panel’s framing, owed a duty by their tutor that went unmet during one of the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic.

Current Status

The panel issued its determination on 14 April 2025 and recommended a five-year review period. On 21 May 2025, Sarah Buxcey, deciding for the Secretary of State, confirmed that sanction: Adusei is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England, but may apply for the order to be set aside from 23 May 2030 — five years from the order date — with no guarantee a future panel would grant it. The decision maker quoted the panel’s note of Adusei’s “repeated” failures in adopting the five-year term. He retains a 28-day right of appeal to the High Court; no published record shows an appeal was filed. If he applies in 2030 and fails, he remains prohibited for life.

Impact on Their Career/Life

Adusei’s case shows the regulatory floor beneath teachers even where no sexual misconduct or conviction exists: a lockdown of skipped welfare calls, a politically handled staff dispute taken to the pupils, and a safeguarding signal ignored on social media were enough for a five-year minimum ban from the profession. The Twitter-posts strand is the case’s quiet centre — a child reaching out in the comments of a teacher’s public account, and the teacher failing to act — and it anchors the panel’s conclusion that his failures repeated across contexts rather than clustering in one bad week. The five-year window leaves a narrow path back: a 2030 application would require him to demonstrate insight into all three strands, including the safeguarding failure. Until then, and permanently if he never applies or fails, his classroom career in England is over. For Harris Academy Tottenham, the published decision documents that the school’s escalation — Head of Year notified late, referral to the TRA — closed a gap a pupil fell through during lockdown.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Joshua Adusei” — source