Monday Ilenotuma

Introduction

Monday Ilenotuma is a former maths teacher at Bexleyheath Academy in Kent who was prohibited from teaching indefinitely after a Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found he engaged in and sought to develop inappropriate relationships with two former pupils — emailing and messaging one about her whereabouts, appearance, medication and menstruation, and holding calls with another — conduct the panel branded a serious breach of professional boundaries. On 22 February 2023 decision maker Sarah Buxcey, acting for the Secretary of State, imposed a prohibition order with a two-year review period. The panel found no evidence that the conduct was sexually motivated, but barred him anyway on the strength of the boundary findings.

Background Information

Ilenotuma joined Bexleyheath Academy in July 2016 as a supply teacher and became a permanent maths teacher that September. On 18 October 2018, concerns were raised that he was sending messages to Pupil A, a former pupil of the school who was by then a Year 13 student elsewhere; she had reported the contact to a former staff member, and the chain reached the school. He was suspended on 23 October 2018 pending an investigation, during which Pupil A disclosed that he had also been contacting Pupil B, a former pupil who was a Year 10 pupil at a different school. The contact spanned September and October 2018, and the case reached the TRA as a two-pupil allegation covering emails, WhatsApp use, phone numbers and calls.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Admitted contact, contested character. Ilenotuma admitted sending the emails and WhatsApp messages, giving Pupil A his mobile number and calling her, but denied that he engaged in or sought to develop an inappropriate relationship with either pupil. The panel found the relationship allegations proved.

On Pupil A, the panel found he used a personal email address to seek her location — an email of 16 September 2018 asking “Where about are you going to?” and another of 22 September asking “Are you home or out with friends” — while also discussing his personal life and hers, offering help with her college work, commenting on her Instagram posts and discussing plans to meet. The WhatsApp contact went further: requests to meet, comments on her appearance, questions about her medication, references to drug use and an invitation to his house to take drugs, discussion of what he wore to bed, and a request for personal information about her menstruation. The panel also found he held telephone or video conversations in which Pupil A told him about her medication and that she was having suicidal thoughts. On Pupil B, a Year 10 pupil at another school, the panel found calls and messages commenting on her appearance, inviting her to text him and discussing her health. Ilenotuma gave evidence and conceded the conduct was wrong, but the panel was “not persuaded that he fully understood why his actions were wrong”, noting he did not appreciate that the timing, frequency, volume and content of the contact was inappropriate. The conduct amounted to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The school suspended him within days of the disclosure and the matter passed through the Local Authority Designated Officer to the regulator; the decision records a LADO letter of April 2019 added to the bundle. At the hearing in February 2023 he was present and represented, and character evidence described a “solid tutor” whose lessons students called “on point”, but the panel noted the two supportive references were undated and unsigned, and it was unclear whether the referees knew of the allegations. The panel was “troubled by the lack of insight demonstrated by Mr Ilenotuma” and concerned he had not considered how his actions affected the pupils. It also found he had “no real understanding about maintaining professional boundaries” and poor knowledge of the safeguarding requirements in Keeping Children Safe in Education.

Current Status

Ilenotuma 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 order to be set aside no earlier than 1 March 2025, two years from the date of the order; the application is not an automatic right, and without a successful one the ban is permanent in practice. The two-year period tracks the panel’s view that the risk of repeating the specific informal-contact behaviour was low, while its wider concern about his grasp of professional boundaries remained.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The ban ended a maths career the school’s own witnesses called effective, on findings that never alleged sexual motivation — the decision expressly records that no such allegation was made. The case sets the boundary clearly: a teacher’s personal email, personal WhatsApp and private calls to former pupils, however benignly intended, are a prohibition-order matter when they probe whereabouts, appearance, medication and menstruation, and a pupil’s disclosure of suicidal thoughts inside such a channel makes the breach graver still. For Ilenotuma the published findings, not the school’s internal suspension, are now what any future employer will find.

Sources

• Teaching Regulation Agency (GOV.UK), “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Monday Ilenotuma,” February 2023 — source