Oliver Barker
Introduction
Oliver Barker was a PE teacher at Percy Hedley School in Tyne and Wear, a school for pupils with learning disabilities. On 11 January 2023 he allowed a pupil recovering from a broken foot to play contact football, then urged the boy to say the injury had happened while he was in goal and recorded an inaccurate safeguarding entry. A professional conduct panel of the Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) found the allegations proved and the conduct dishonest and lacking integrity, and on 11 July 2025 Marc Cavey, deciding on behalf of the Secretary of State for Education, prohibited Barker from teaching indefinitely, with review after two years.
Background Information
Barker commenced employment as a PE teacher at Percy Hedley School on 1 September 2022, training that September on the school’s CPOMS safeguarding recording system. He was an inexperienced teacher, having qualified in July 2020. On 26 January 2023 his employment was terminated during his probationary period, and the panel noted that the school carried out no investigation into the January incident. He did not admit the allegations in his response of 10 August 2023, sent a revised form admitting all of them on 20 April 2024, and signed a statement of agreed facts on 11 June 2024. At the virtual hearing of 7 and 8 July 2025 Barker was absent and unrepresented, so the panel treated the matter as disputed and made its own findings.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Permitting a pupil with a broken foot to play contact football, then covering it up.
On or around 11 January 2023 Barker allowed Pupil B, recovering from a broken foot, to join a football lesson. In the statement of agreed facts he admitted he knew of the injury and had been told by Witness A, a learning support assistant, that Pupil B could only practise ball skills or play in goal; the physiotherapist’s advice, relayed to Barker as he entered the sports hall, was that Pupil B must not play in the field because he “tackles aggressively and takes it too far”. Pupil B sat on the bench, kept repeating that he wanted to play football and shouted asking to play “out of the net” for three minutes. When Witness A’s attention was diverted, he was on the pitch, telling her “Oliver said I could play”; another assistant reported words to the effect of “Oliver said he could play at his own risk”. About five minutes later a tackle injured Pupil B, who limped up the pitch and lay on the floor rolling around shouting. The panel considered it “more likely than not that Mr Barker had permitted Pupil B to participate in the football match (outside of goal)”, since he had been watching the game and had not asked Pupil B to leave.
Barker admitted he then told Pupil B to say the injury had happened while he was in goal. Witness A’s contemporaneous account recorded Barker saying “it happened when you were in goal”, Pupil B replying “Nah, I was playing football and that idiot, Pupil C tackled us”, and Barker saying “try that again, it happened when you were in goal didn’t it”, to which Pupil B did not reply. The panel found he had attempted to influence the pupil to give a different version of events, though it “exercised considerable caution with this allegation, given Mr Barker’s change in his stance”.
He also recorded the incident on CPOMS, after asking Witness A “So what are we saying?”. His entry stated that “Pupil B stayed in goal for a 5/6 minutes [sic] by then ventured further and further out”. Given Witness A’s consistent account that Pupil B had not been in goal, the panel found the record “appears to have been one that would absolve him from any fault being attributed to him” and was not an accurate version of events. Applying the test in Ivey v Genting Casinos, the panel found the conduct dishonest by the objective standards of ordinary decent people; because Barker was seeking to cover up what had happened, his conduct also lacked integrity.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The published decision is a regulatory record and contains no press coverage. The panel found the proved conduct amounted to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, finding breaches of the Teachers’ Standards and of Keeping Children Safe in Education, but not of Working Together to Safeguard Children. It found the offences of controlling or coercive behaviour, and fraud or serious dishonesty, relevant. Pupil B sustained a further injury causing additional pain; the panel treated that injury, “seeking to persuade a child with learning difficulties to lie”, and the concealment by an inaccurate CPOMS entry as aggravating. As Barker provided no explanation or expression of insight or remorse, the panel could not be satisfied there was no or minimal risk of repetition. It recommended a prohibition order with immediate effect and a two-year review period.
Current Status
The determination is dated 8 July 2025; the prohibition order, imposed by Marc Cavey on 11 July 2025 on behalf of the Secretary of State, takes effect when served on Barker. Barker “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, but not until 16 July 2027 at the earliest; “This is not an automatic right to have the prohibition order removed”. Without a successful application he remains prohibited indefinitely, though he has “a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days from the date he is given notice of this order”.
Impact on Their Career/Life
Unless a future application to set aside the order succeeds, the prohibition ends Barker’s teaching career in England. He had already left education by the later stages of the TRA process, telling the agency in July 2024 that he had found a new job in a completely different sector and could not see himself returning to teaching. The findings that his conduct was dishonest and lacked integrity remain on the public record that any future review panel would consider. Cavey placed considerable weight on the absence of insight or remorse and on the coercive element of the dishonesty in deciding that publication alone could not satisfy the public interest.