Steven Ward

Introduction

Steven Ward is a primary school teacher from Nottingham who has been banned from teaching indefinitely after a Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) panel found that he drank alcohol during lessons. Ward, 41, was working at Southwark Primary School in Basford, Nottingham, when he was seen “under the influence of alcohol during school hours” on three separate days in November 2023. The panel, which found he demonstrated “unacceptable professional conduct”, issued an indefinite prohibition order in January 2026 — the regulator’s most lasting sanction, barring him from the classroom with no review of the ban possible for at least three years. Ward denied all the allegations made against him.

Background Information

Ward started working at Southwark Primary School as a trainee in 2014, meaning he had spent close to a decade at the Basford school by the time of the events that ended his career there. By November 2023 he was a 41-year-old teacher taking classes, and it was in his own classroom that the incidents unfolded. Across three separate days that month, witnesses saw behaviour that would later form the basis of the TRA case: drinking from an IPA-looking can in front of his class, hiding the drink in his bag, mints after each sip to mask it, a beer can moved behind a mug on his desk, and a strong smell of alcohol noticed in a workplace meeting. The matter was referred to the TRA in July 2024 and came before a panel of the regulator.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Adjudicated vs. alleged. The findings below are regulatory findings made by the Teaching Regulation Agency on the civil standard (the balance of probabilities), not criminal convictions, and no criminal proceedings were reported. Ward denied all the allegations made against him.

The case against Ward rested on a series of sightings by witnesses in November 2023. The panel heard that on November 9 2023, witnesses in his class saw him “drinking from a blue Brewdog Punk IPA looking can”, hiding the drink in his bag and “consuming a mint after each sip”. The detail of the mints — one after every sip — suggested a deliberate effort to conceal what he was doing from the pupils in front of him.

The next day the behaviour continued. A witness said that, while in class in the afternoon of November 10 2023, she saw Ward taking a beer can from his bag and that he “moved the can from his bag to his desk, behind a mug”, turning away from the pupils each time he drank. The mug served as cover; the turned back served as cover too. The following day, November 13 2023, another witness who had a meeting with Ward said they smelled a “strong smell of alcohol” when entering the meeting room, adding “it was a strong enough smell to notice it instantly when walking into a large two-person office”. That account came not from his classroom but from an ordinary staff meeting, which is what made it so difficult to dismiss.

Taken together, the evidence supported the panel’s conclusion that Ward consumed alcohol on multiple occasions during lessons and that he was seen “under the influence of alcohol during school hours” on three separate days in November 2023. The panel found his actions amounted to “unacceptable professional conduct”. Ward, who was referred to the TRA in July 2024, denied all the allegations made against him — but the panel found against him on the evidence, and the findings that followed were made on the balance of probabilities.

Public Reaction and Consequences

The panel’s public reasoning focused not only on the drinking itself but on Ward’s response to being held accountable for it. The TRA panel said he showed a “lack of insight and remorse” during the hearing, meaning “there was a risk of repetition” which could put pupils at risk. That finding — that a teacher who drank during lessons and then showed no insight into it might do so again — sat at the centre of the case for the strongest available sanction. The panel report further said “public confidence in the profession could be seriously weakened” if actions like those of Ward were not treated with the “utmost seriousness”.

The consequence was an indefinite prohibition order, issued on January 16 2026, banning Ward from teaching indefinitely. The case was reported publicly in March 2026, when LBC detailed the findings, the witness accounts from his classroom, and the ban.

Current Status

Ward is banned from teaching indefinitely. The indefinite prohibition order was issued on January 16 2026 and cannot be reviewed until at least January 22 2029, meaning he must spend at least three years under the ban before he can even ask for it to be reconsidered — and any review would revisit the panel’s finding of a lack of insight and remorse. No appeal against the prohibition order was reported.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The prohibition order ended Ward’s teaching career roughly a decade after he joined Southwark Primary School as a trainee in 2014. An indefinite ban from teaching is not a suspension from one school but exclusion from the profession: whatever role he might seek in a classroom, the TRA’s prohibition order stands in the way of it, and its indefinite nature means there is no date on which it simply lapses. The panel’s reasoning — that his “lack of insight and remorse” created “a risk of repetition” putting pupils at risk, and that “public confidence in the profession could be seriously weakened” if such conduct went untreated with the “utmost seriousness” — is what converted a finding about drinking at work into a ban with no fixed end. For Ward, the route back, if it exists at all, opens no earlier than January 22 2029.