Paul Harry Symonds
Introduction
Paul Harry Symonds, a teacher at Townley Grammar School in Kent from 2016 until his dismissal, was banned from teaching for life in July 2021 after admitting that he had been convicted of making indecent photographs of children. Symonds was arrested in May 2019 after his school was told police were investigating him over accessing and distributing indecent images of children, dismissed in January 2020, and convicted at Woolwich Crown Court in September 2020 — receiving unpaid work, rehabilitation requirements, a five-year place on the sex offenders register and a sexual harm prevention order. He admitted the conviction in a signed statement of agreed facts before a Teaching Regulation Agency panel, which decided his case without a hearing; decision maker Alan Meyrick ruled he shall never be entitled to apply for restoration.
Background Information
Symonds commenced employment at Townley Grammar School, a selective girls’ school in Bexleyheath, Kent, on 1 September 2016. On 3 May 2019 the school was informed that police were investigating him in relation to accessing and distributing indecent images of children. He was suspended on 7 May 2019, arrested and interviewed by police on 9 May 2019, and interviewed again on 17 January 2020. The school dismissed him on 31 January 2020. The offences of which he was convicted were all dated 8 May 2019 — the day after his arrest — and the panel also noted evidence, from a PNC printout, that the case involved offences under the Protection of Children Act 1978.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Convicted. Symonds pleaded guilty and was convicted of three counts of making an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child at Woolwich Crown Court on 16 September 2020. The TRA panel accepted the certificate of conviction as conclusive proof and did not re-examine the underlying facts; the criminal findings are a matter of court record.
On 16 September 2020 Symonds appeared at Woolwich Crown Court and was convicted of three counts of making an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child on 8 May 2019, each contrary to section 1(a) of the Protection of Children Act 1978. The certificate of conviction recorded the sentence: 200 hours of unpaid work over two years, placement on the sex offenders register for five years, rehabilitation activity requirements of up to 30 days, a £90 victim surcharge, and a sexual harm prevention order for five years. The panel noted the sentence involved no imprisonment, but also noted from the evidence before it that six of the photographs were Category A images — the most serious level of indecent images under the Sentencing Council’s grading — and that a conviction for making indecent images is, under the Secretary of State’s advice, likely to be considered a relevant offence permanently incompatible with teaching.
Symonds admitted both the facts of the allegations and that they amounted to a conviction of a relevant offence, signing a statement of agreed facts on 19 May 2021. The panel accepted the PNC printout as establishing the legislation and offence date the certificate itself omitted. The case against him in regulatory terms was therefore complete on documents alone: chronology, conviction certificate, police record and his own admission, with no disputed facts for a hearing to resolve.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The consequences cascaded from one notification: a school told on 3 May 2019 that its teacher was under police investigation suspended him within four days, dismissed him within nine months, and the criminal courts and the regulator each added their own layer — community sentence, registration, prevention order, then a lifetime prohibition. The panel recorded that no recent testimonial evidence had been adduced about his ability as a teacher, and its decision and the SoS decision record no public statement, no union involvement and no media coverage. As in most conviction-route cases, Symonds’s own guilt plea foreclosed any contested hearing; the only question the panel faced was sanction, and the advice left it only one answer.
Current Status
Symonds is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. Decision maker Alan Meyrick made the order on 7 July 2021, ruling — in view of the seriousness of the allegations found proved — that Symonds “shall not be entitled to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach”, closing off the review route that less serious prohibition orders allow. The five-year sex offender registration and sexual harm prevention order imposed at Woolwich Crown Court in September 2020 run on their own statutory clocks alongside the ban. The decision records no application by Symonds and no further proceedings.
Impact on Their Career/Life
A grammar-school teaching career under three years old ended with a police investigation his employer learned of before he could return to a classroom, and the combination of a criminal conviction and a no-restoration prohibition order means he cannot re-enter the profession by any route. The case is the site’s cleanest example of the conviction-track prohibition: agreed facts, certificate of conviction, no hearing, no review. Its specific aggravating detail — six Category A images, the most serious grading band — shows the panel looking past a non-custodial sentence to the underlying gravity of the material, and weighing that gravity into a permanent rather than reviewable ban.