Paul Maloney

Introduction

Paul Maloney was an assistant head teacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead at Fortismere School in Muswell Hill, north London, when he was arrested at the school itself in January 2020 over a violent assault on a family member the previous December. He was dismissed within a week, convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm that June and sentenced to fifteen months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, that September. Maloney admitted the regulatory allegation and accepted a statement of agreed facts, and on 22 October 2021 decision maker John Knowles banned him from teaching, with the prohibition subject to review no earlier than November 2024.

Background Information

Maloney joined Fortismere School as an assistant head on 1 September 2019. On 6 December 2019 he attended a senior leadership team social event, where a family member — whose relationship to him the decision redacts — joined during the latter part of the evening. In the early hours of 7 December 2019 he assaulted that person, occasioning actual bodily harm. The Local Authority Designated Officer received a referral from the London Borough of Barnet MASH on 16 December 2019 reporting that a teacher working in Haringey had been arrested; the school contacted the police investigating officer on 30 December 2019 but was told only that officers were still seeking to arrest him. On 8 January 2020 police arrived at Fortismere and arrested Maloney in front of the school community. He denied the assault in interview. The LADO advised suspension, but he was charged before the school could formalise it, and on 14 January 2020 the school dismissed him over the criminal action. The Crown Court at Harrow’s certificate of conviction recorded the 29 June 2020 conviction entered at North West London Magistrates’ Court; sentencing followed on 21 September 2020 with fifteen months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, up to 25 days of rehabilitation activity requirement, 40 days on a Building Better Relationships accredited programme, and 200 hours of unpaid work.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm against a family member after a senior leadership team social event; fifteen-month suspended sentence; dismissed within a week of his arrest at the school; banned from teaching with a three-year review period.

The panel considered a single allegation: that on 29 June 2020 Maloney was convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, contrary to section 47 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861, for conduct on 7 December 2019. On the regulator’s Advice, a conviction is accepted as conclusive proof and the facts are not re-examined. Maloney admitted the facts in his response to the notice of referral and in a statement of agreed facts signed on 19 September 2021, and the case was decided at a private meeting without a hearing. Although the offence took place outside school and involved no pupil or colleague, the panel found the degree of violence high: grabbing the victim by the hair and round the throat, banging the victim’s head onto the stairs, and sustained verbal abuse and threats throughout. It described the offence as involving “complete loss of control resulting in serious violence and significant physical and mental harm”, and stressed that Maloney, as a Designated Safeguarding Lead, would work with vulnerable pupils who could include children with significant mental health difficulties — making the nature of his offending directly relevant to the context of his work.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel accepted that Maloney had admitted the conviction at the earliest opportunity, engaged with the process and produced mitigation documents, which it admitted at the hearing stage. It weighed his role as a role model and the public interest in teachers upholding public trust in the profession, both inside and outside school, and concluded the conviction was relevant to his fitness to teach. It recommended a prohibition order with a review period of three years. Knowles agreed, finding the misconduct particularly serious precisely because it rested on a conviction for violence, and determined that a prohibition order was both proportionate and in the public interest. The school, meanwhile, had already acted: Maloney’s employment ended on 14 January 2020, six days after his arrest on the premises, with no suspension period having even been formalised before the charge intervened.

Current Status

Maloney 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 prohibition order to be set aside, but not until 4 November 2024 at the earliest — three years from the order, which took effect on service, and an application is not an automatic right to removal. The suspended sentence imposed in September 2020 ran for two years with its attached rehabilitation, relationship-programme and unpaid-work requirements; had he reoffended within that window, the fifteen months of custody would have been activated. His removal from the assistant head post at Fortismere in January 2020 preceded both the conviction and the ban, so the regulatory outcome confirmed rather than caused the end of his school career.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The case illustrates how a single domestic-violence conviction can end a senior leadership career in the space of weeks: from a school social event on 6 December 2019 to dismissal on 14 January 2020, with the arrest conducted publicly at the school gates. The panel’s reasoning put particular weight on the incompatibility between a safeguarding leadership role and a sustained, violent loss of control at home — the very behaviour a Designated Safeguarding Lead is charged with identifying and responding to in others. For the school, the episode showed the machinery working at speed: the LADO referral, the police arrest on site and dismissal within a week of charge. For the profession, the three-year review period rather than a lifetime ban reflected the panel’s view that a one-off conviction, admitted and punished by the criminal courts, sits at the less severe end of the prohibition spectrum, even when the underlying violence was grave.

Sources

• Dept for Education, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Paul Maloney” — source