Ruqaiyah Akhtar
Introduction
Ruqaiyah Akhtar is a serving secondary-school teacher who was prohibited from teaching for life in November 2025 after a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found that, as a teacher in east London, she engaged in a sexual relationship with a former pupil in 2017 and again around 2020, sent him topless photographs, and told him to “delete the fkn messages and pictures now” when allegations surfaced. She was also found to have concealed from her then-employer, until January 2021, that a former pupil was alleging grooming and that she had reported him to police for blackmail. The panel found those allegations proved but cleared her of the 2013-14 allegations from her earlier school; the decision maker went further than the panel’s recommended three-year review and imposed a lifetime ban with no restoration.
Background Information
Akhtar, born 2 June 1983, taught at Kingsford Community School between September 2013 and September 2014 and later worked at Harris Boys Academy; at the time of the 2025 hearing her employer was recorded as Haberdashers’ Crayford Academy in Kent. In the summer of 2020 the former pupil — referred to as Pupil A — began making grooming allegations and, by his own admission to the panel, sought money from her: “pay me money and I won’t take you to court – I was trying to blackmail her”. A police incident report from October 2020 recorded Pupil A reporting that he had been in a sexual relationship with Akhtar during his school and college years. She reported him to police in August 2020, saying she was being threatened and blackmailed, but did not disclose any of this to Haberdashers’ until 11 January 2021.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Adjudicated vs. alleged. A Teaching Regulation Agency panel found allegations 2(a), 2(b), 3 and 4 proved on the balance of probabilities after a contested three-day hearing. The allegations concerning her 2013-14 period at Kingsford Community School — conversations of a sexual nature, permitting touching, and sexual intercourse while he was a pupil — were all found NOT proved, and the decision maker put them entirely from her mind. The proved findings are regulatory determinations; no criminal charge against Akhtar appears in the published decision.
The panel found proved that while at Harris Boys Academy she sent one or more inappropriate and/or topless pictures of herself to Pupil A in or around 2017, and that she engaged in a sexual relationship with him — by then a former pupil of Kingsford — in or around 2017 and in or around 2020. It found insufficient evidence of a relationship in 2015. Pupil A told the panel that after his exclusion from the school he was “visiting Ms Akhtar’s house and having sex with her every day”, describing it as “a ‘friends with benefits’ situation” lasting six to seven months before they broke up and later resumed briefly. The panel relied in part on Akhtar’s own January 2021 written statement to a witness — “2017 Nov – Pictures were exchanged between us” and, of late 2017, “This led to sex” — and on WhatsApp thumbnails dated November 2017. It also found proved that she sent Pupil A messages stating “But what you need to do is say to them that you made it up and you were angry and delete anything you have” and “Delete the fkn messages and pictures now”.
The panel further found proved her failure to disclose, until 11 January 2021, both that a former pupil was making grooming allegations and that she was being blackmailed by him. Its mitigation findings were severe: a serious lack of insight and remorse, with her representations focused on the proceedings’ impact on herself; a “complete failure… to recognise the impact of her actions on Pupil A and his family”, whose evidence — “It has changed my life. It pushed me to the point I had to push everyone away as I didn’t know who to trust” — the panel accepted; and findings that she had deliberately concealed her previous employment and directed the deletion of messages. It found a real risk of repetition, noting she had shown limited insight and continued to teach at secondary level. A union letter asserted she had expressed “genuine remorse” and that her school was fully informed, but the panel saw no supporting evidence beyond the admission itself.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The published decision documents the regulatory consequences rather than public debate. The matter reached the regulator through the school’s safeguarding route — her January 2021 disclosure to Haberdashers’ of the police interview and allegations — and the panel heard the former pupil describe lasting trauma. Character references were given only limited weight because their authors did not confirm knowledge of the allegations. No criminal charge against Akhtar appears in the published record: she reported Pupil A to police for blackmail in August 2020, he reported the relationship the same October, and the decision documents neither outcome beyond the incident report it cites. Her employer at the hearing date is recorded as Haberdashers’ Crayford Academy, with the panel noting she continued to teach at secondary level.
Current Status
The panel recommended a prohibition order with a three-year review period. The decision maker, Sarah Buxcey, rejected that balance on 18 November 2025: applying the Advice’s serious-sexual-misconduct provision — where the act was sexually motivated and the individual used their professional position to influence or exploit a person — she found no review period should be allowed, citing the findings that Akhtar deliberately concealed her prior employment for self-interest and directed the deletion of messages. Akhtar is prohibited from teaching indefinitely, cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England, and was judged not entitled to apply for restoration. The determination is dated 12 November 2025; she has a right of appeal to the High Court within 28 days.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The ban converts what the panel had been prepared to treat as a three-year-review case into a permanent one: an indefinite prohibition across every school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation and children’s home in England, with no entitlement to apply for restoration. Akhtar was employed as a teacher when the decision landed, so the order’s practical effect is immediate unemployment from the profession — and, given the no-restoration terms, the end of her teaching career unless a High Court appeal succeeded. The published findings also document, on the regulator’s record, her own written admissions about the photographs and the 2017 sexual encounter, and the former pupil’s blackmail demand — both of which shaped a case the decision maker concluded warranted the strongest available sanction.