A North London teacher has been banned from the profession after a petition to oust the headteacher led to police officers being stationed outside the school gates. Joshua Adusei, 31, who taught PE at the Harris Academy in Tottenham, encouraged Year 10 students to sign the petition which called for the headteacher to be sacked.
He encouraged students in the playground to sign the petition in April 2021, after he had told the headteacher he would “get him out” if he did not resign, a Teaching Regulation Agency panel heard.
The Change.org petition, which received more than 6,000 signatures before it was ended, said the headteacher had permanently excluded three black students from the school after one month in the role and had introduced “a zero tolerance behaviour policy that disproportionately affects BAME and SEN students”. His name was removed from the petition after the Metropolitan Police received reports of four death threats from the school, the Guardian reported.
His name was removed from the petition after the Metropolitan Police received reports of four death threats from the school, the Guardian reported.
Giving oral evidence to the panel, the headteacher said Mr Adusei came to his office on April 19 2021 and informed him that he and others did not think he was doing a good job, and that he had come to request his resignation.
He said there was no attempt by Mr Adusei to specify his grievances or the basis upon which he was asking him to resign at the meeting, but that he said “If you don’t resign I am going to start a petition to get you out”, which left him feeling threatened.
Another witnesses told the panel that the following day, they saw Mr Adusei and another member of staff in the playground with around 10-20 students stood around them, which was “unusual” as he should not have been on duty for their lunch.
A Year 10 pupil who was stopped by the witness after walking past with their phone out – which was against school policy – said: “Not gonna lie sir, a member of staff has told me to get it out to sign a petition”. Mr Adusei was suspended the same day.
Addressing the claims in the petition, the headteacher told the panel he had only been directly involved in excluding two students and that the decision was taken in consultation with various other management staff. He said there was “no basis” for asserting that his actions disproportionately affected BAME or SEN students.
The panel heard both parents and pupils were confused by Mr Adusei’s actions, which led to plain clothes police officers being placed at the school gates. The Metropolitan Police also contacted the teacher who Mr Adusei called to resign about enhanced protection measures.
The panel found Mr Adusei had made “deliberate and pre-determined decisions to publish untrue and/or misleading comments about Colleague A (the headteacher) and then to manipulate the actions of children for his own private purposes”, which it considered to be “an abuse of his position and an abuse of trust.”
Further allegations that Mr Adusei had failed to complete welfare calls to 26 pupils in his tutor group and failed to teach online lessons on two occasions in January 2021 were also found to have been proven. Mr Adusei, who had been employed at the school since 2019, provided no mitigation to the panel or evidence of material insight or remorse for his actions.
The panel found Mr Adusei’s actions impacted the focus of the children on education and undermined the school. It added: “Mr Adusei had not provided evidence of insight and/or remorse and had not engaged in the process at all or, apparently, taken responsibility for his actions in any way save, in very limited terms.”
On May 15 the panel banned Joshua Adusei from teaching for a minimum of five years.
This mean he is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England
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