Teacher at Rotherham school 'locked pupil in room to hide their relationship'

A teacher who encouraged a pupil to take drugs, had her sit on his knee and hid her in a cupboard at school has been banned from the profession.

Physics teacher Lee Nicholson, 39, who taught at Aston Academy in Swallownest near Rotherham was handed a prohibition order after the inappropriate relationship with the pupil between 2014 and 2018.

In March 2023 Nicholson was arrested on suspicion of inciting a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity, and during a search of his home drugs were found.

He was not prosecuted over the allegation involving the pupil, but was convicted and fined at Sheffield Magistrates a year later in relation to four offences of possessing drugs, including cocaine.

A Teaching Regulation Agency panel found Nicholson spent excessive one-on-one time with the pupil who said they used to meet at 7am, before school, and on a Saturday when she was supposedly revising for exams in 2016.

They’d go to a locked meeting room and they’d cuddle and she would sit on his lap.

When she started sixth form he’d visit her in a “cupboard”, a storage room at the back of the class.

Nicholson put in a desk for her and “she was often locked in there during his lessons when he was teaching younger year groups”.

The pupil said she couldn’t leave while he was teaching and “she was left in there for long periods of time.

"She stated that between lessons Mr Nicholson would come and visit her in there and they would lie together on the floor and cuddle in the far left corner of the room.”

The panel also found that on one or more occasions he told her that if the relationship was revealed he would “drive (his) car off the road” and that he had a “suicide note” in his drawer.

The panel "noted that it had found proven that Mr Nicholson had engaged in and developed an inappropriate relationship with Student A including in extensive inappropriate communication with her which was, in places, of a sexual nature”.

In messages it “had found he encouraged her to take recreational drugs and masturbate. It had also found he engaged in inappropriate physical contact with Student A including in holding her hand, cuddling her, having her sit on his knee, stroking her face, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her out of a cupboard and allowing her to kiss him.

“It had also found that he had given her a number of gifts and had hidden her inside a store cupboard and locked her in a room with the intention of concealing their inappropriate relationship.

"The panel had no doubt whatsoever that such actions were in fundamental breach of the professional boundaries between a teacher and a child”.

Nicholson, who was suspended following his arrest in 2023, did not attend the hearing. He expressed “regret, shame and sorrow” for his actions.

The panel said they didn’t accept that it was down to “naivety” or “poor judgement” as he suggested, saying “the often sexual content of the detailed communications” and their findings “ran wholly counter to such a submission”.

Decision maker Stuart Blomfield, on behalf of the Secretary of State, banned Nicholson from teaching indefinitely on August 10. He has 28 days to appeal to the High Court.