Thomas Hayward
Introduction
Thomas Hayward was a teacher at Build a Future Independent School, a small West Midlands school for children unable to remain in mainstream education, until a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found he had personally taken part in degrading conduct toward pupils there. His is one of three linked determinations from the school — with headteacher Adam Webb and deputy headteacher Alison Simmons — issued in early 2026 that together ended all three careers in English education.
The panel’s schedule of findings against Hayward is the most granular of the three: a list of specific acts and specific words, found proved paragraph by paragraph.
Background Information
Build a Future Independent School taught pupils with additional needs during the period in question, the 2020-2021 academic year. Hayward taught there from 28 September 2020 to 28 January 2021, the window the panel examined. The school’s treatment of its pupils reached the TRA as a referral covering the leadership and staff, and the panel heard Hayward’s case alongside his colleagues’.
The TRA’s published advice directs panels to treat conduct toward vulnerable children with particular gravity, because the pupils least able to complain are the most dependent on adults’ restraint. In alternative provision the usual external checks — parents who notice changes, peers who compare notes, pupils confident enough to report — are all weaker, which is why the regulator’s schedules in this case read as an attempt to reconstruct, from documents and witness evidence, what the children themselves had no way to escalate.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Allegations. The claims in this section are findings of a Teaching Regulation Agency professional conduct panel, which reported substantiating them after a hearing. They are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions, and no criminal charge was brought against Hayward on this conduct.
The panel found proved, across the decision’s schedules, that between 28 September 2020 and 28 January 2021 Hayward engaged in and/or allowed inappropriate behaviour with pupils, including conduct the panel listed paragraph by paragraph: holding a pupil’s head under water in a swimming pool, throwing objects at pupils, and using mocking and belittling language about the children in his care. It further found that by reason of that conduct he did not safeguard the welfare of pupils, and it found proved a further schedule of conduct including that on or around 27 January 2021 he attended the school with bullets and/or a blank-firing firearm, an item the panel treated as profoundly threatening in a school setting.
The panel concluded the facts amounted to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute. The granularity of the findings — specific pupils, specific days, specific objects — left little room for the characterisation of the conduct as horseplay that the school’s internal culture had apparently tolerated.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The Secretary of State accepted the panel’s recommendation and prohibited Hayward from teaching indefinitely. The published order states he “is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England”, and, in view of the seriousness of the findings, that he is not entitled to apply for restoration. The three linked Build a Future bans were published on GOV.UK on 27 March 2026.
As with his colleagues, no mainstream press reported the case; the public account is the regulator’s own published decision. The determination’s list format — allegations found proved one line at a time — has an effect the summary cannot: it shows the misconduct as a routine, repeated across dates and pupils, rather than a single lapse, and it is that repetition which the Secretary of State cited in removing any right of restoration.
Current Status
Hayward is permanently barred from teaching in England. The prohibition order carries no review period, so no future date exists at which he may seek to have it lifted. The regulatory record of his conduct at Build a Future remains publicly searchable.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The ban forecloses all child-facing work in English education and, given the nature of the findings, any adjacent field involving vulnerable people. The case’s lasting significance is systemic: it documents a school where, for one academic year, the head, the deputy and a teacher all failed the same children, and shows the regulator’s willingness to end all three careers when it happens.
Sources
- Teaching Regulation Agency, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Mr Thomas Hayward,” published 27 March 2026 — source