Kanchana Vanhove

Introduction

Kanchana Vanhove was the headteacher of Wareside Church of England Primary School and nursery in Hertfordshire, a village school of around 48 pupils that closed in August 2022. In April 2024 a Teaching Regulation Agency professional conduct panel found that between November 2018 and May 2019 she made unauthorised purchases on the school’s Amazon account and from school bank monies, and submitted unauthorised expenses claims, and that in respect of the proved items this conduct lacked integrity and was dishonest. Decision maker Sarah Buxcey banned her from teaching indefinitely with a two-year review period.

Background Information

Vanhove joined Wareside as a supply teacher in autumn 2016, was appointed acting headteacher, then interim part-time headteacher in 2017, and won the permanent part-time headteacher role in 2018. The school was in a fragile financial position, and external auditors from SIAS eventually examined its purchasing records. The allegations centred on Schedule 1 (the school Amazon account), Schedule 2 (school bank account and monies) and Schedule 3 (expenses claims) — 30 items in total, of which the panel found a substantial number proved, including cocktail and champagne glasses, a croquet set, garden games, outdoor string lights, a bike computer, a D’addario guitar tuner, Hornby railway items and personal-ish book orders, against a school whose audited purchasing should have been entirely for pupils.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Dishonesty found per Ivey on the proved school-account purchases; concealment allegation rejected on its specifics; banned with a two-year review.

The panel found allegation 1.a.i proved for most Schedule 1 items and allegation 1.b proved for the Schedule 2 purchases, including a £230 food order whose bank receipts Vanhove could not produce and for which the school calendar showed no candidate event, and cheque requisitions including a £144 Squarespace subscription and £60 of EYFS signage later invoiced oddly. Applying the Supreme Court’s Ivey v Genting standard, the panel concluded that by the standards of ordinary decent people the proved conduct was dishonest, because Vanhove knew the purchases were not for the school’s benefit; it found allegations 2.a and 2.b proved accordingly. But the panel acquitted her of the gravest specific: it found she did not deliberately remove six invoices to mislead auditors — out of 30 scheduled items only 6 were marked removed, which a genuine concealment attempt would not plausibly look like — and it also rejected individual items where the benefit-of-doubt ran her way, such as French teaching books and science-club geodes. Her evidence that events like a December 2018 headteachers’ meeting (six to eight attendees) justified 64 cocktail glasses was rejected against the school’s pupil numbers.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case was heard across six sitting days in July 2023, five in March 2024 and a final day in April 2024 — one of the longest recent TRA determinations — with Vanhove present and represented throughout. The panel found the public interest engaged in maintaining confidence and upholding standards, weighted by her seniority: as headteacher she held a position of ultimate trust for school funds. Its recommendation noted the lack of acceptance of responsibility, lack of insight and lack of contrition as significant factors, and Buxcey’s decision repeated that formulation when adopting the ban. No mainstream press coverage attaches to the regulatory outcome; the published decision is the case’s public record. The school itself closed in 2022 after falling pupil numbers, with the financial scrutiny having fallen on the final years of its existence.

Current Status

Vanhove is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. She may apply for the order to be set aside, but not until 17 April 2026 — two years from Buxcey’s order of 10 April 2024 — and a set-aside application is not an automatic right; without one she remains banned for life. The determination date is 5 April 2024, and she retains a right of appeal to the King’s Bench Division of the High Court within 28 days of notice.

Impact on Their Career/Life

For a headteacher, a dishonesty finding over small-ticket purchases ends a career as completely as a criminal conviction would: the panel expressly weighed her senior position of trust and her failure to accept responsibility when recommending prohibition. The case is also a study in partial acquittal — the concealment charge failed on arithmetic, and several purchases were found genuinely for school use — yet the surviving findings were enough for a lifetime ban with the shortest realistic review window. For small village schools the decision underlines that Amazon-account and cheque-requisition purchasing is audited line-by-line, and that a head who treats school funds as household money will be judged by the Ivey standard whatever the amounts.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Ms Kanchana Vanhove” — source