Roderick Stevenson

Introduction

Roderick Stevenson is a former science teacher, cover supervisor and science technician at Ormiston Victory Academy in Norwich who was prohibited from teaching indefinitely, with no entitlement ever to apply for restoration, after convictions for making indecent photographs of children, possessing prohibited images and possessing extreme pornographic material. The sentencing court’s remarks recorded 269 Category A images among the material and that Stevenson knew some of the children depicted in the Category C images. Decision maker Sarah Buxcey imposed the prohibition order on 6 March 2023 after a panel found the convictions amounted to a relevant offence.

Background Information

Stevenson spent nearly two decades at the academy: science teacher from 1 September 1999 to 31 December 2013, cover supervisor from January 2014, and science technician with a few hours of teaching from September 2018. He was arrested on 25 March 2019 and suspended from work the same day, and resigned on 26 April 2019. On or around 17 August 2021 he was convicted at Norwich Crown Court of three counts of making indecent photographs of a child, possessing prohibited images of children, and possessing extreme pornographic images; on 9 November 2021 he received a ten-month suspended sentence with concurrent shorter terms, 240 hours of unpaid work, a rehabilitation requirement, a ten-year sexual harm prevention order, ten years on the notification requirements, and forfeiture and destruction of the laptop, Kindle, memory cards and discs used in the offending.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Convicted. Stevenson admitted the convictions and signed a statement of agreed facts; the panel accepted the certificate of conviction as conclusive proof of the offences and the facts they imply. The findings below rest on a criminal conviction, not a contested regulatory judgment.

The panel’s account of the offending stresses duration and knowledge: it noted that Stevenson knew the children depicted in some of the Category C material, and that the offending “took place over a considerable period of time”. His mitigation was substantial on its face — previous good character, frank admissions to police, a guilty plea at the earliest opportunity, therapy he began and funded voluntarily before he was charged, a pre-sentence report assessing him at low risk of re-offending, and a cognitive behavioural therapist’s report describing insight, techniques to manage his behaviour, and written exercises building empathy toward a hypothetical victim. The panel found that evidence “of note” but held that the seriousness of the offending governed fitness to teach: the conviction indicated a sexual interest in children and a corresponding safeguarding risk, and the Advice classifies image offences of this kind as weighting firmly against any return. Decisively, the panel observed that his representations to it “made no reference to any empathy with the children depicted in the images, nor any expression of remorse” — the same failure the decision maker weighted when adopting the panel’s no-review recommendation.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The case moved from arrest to career-ban in four years, with the academy acting immediately on the arrest — same-day suspension and a resignation within a month — and the regulator publishing the outcome in full. Stevenson, by then retired and drawing his pension, asked that the matter be handled without a hearing and made no personal appearance; the panel proceeded on his agreed facts. It found a strong public interest in protecting pupils and upholding standards, and concluded that prohibition was proportionate notwithstanding the therapy evidence — the rehabilitative record bought him credit at sentencing, but not a review period, because the empathy gap before the panel remained.

Current Status

Stevenson is prohibited from teaching indefinitely with immediate effect from the 6 March 2023 order, and Buxcey’s decision expressly removes his entitlement to apply for restoration of his eligibility to teach. The criminal sentences run in parallel: the suspended term and its requirements, the ten-year sexual harm prevention order and the ten-year notification requirement all continue regardless of the TRA outcome. He remains on the Disclosure and Barring Service barred list pathway recorded at sentencing, and barred from work in any school, sixth-form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.

Impact on Their Career/Life

A career that began in 1999 and survived a role change into technical support ended with two overlapping bars: the criminal register for a decade and the professional ban for life. The decision illustrates the regulator’s position that therapy and low assessed risk answer the question of re-offending but not the question of fitness — the Advice’s no-review category for image offences applies even where the teacher pleads guilty at the first opportunity, funds his own treatment, and draws a low-risk pre-sentence report. For the academy, the case is a record of immediate suspension on arrest; for the profession, it is another published entry in the category the decision maker described as among the most serious that cross a regulator’s desk.

Sources

• Teaching Regulation Agency (GOV.UK), “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Roderick Stevenson,” Mar 6, 2023 — source