The head of an independent girls school has sent out hundreds of letters to past pupils asking if they were victims of a teacher jailed for seven years for sex abuse.
Alison Jones, head of Rye St Antony School in Oxford, has written to every pupil she can trace who left the school in the 11 years between 1989 and 2000.
That is when John Walker, sentenced last month for indecently assaulting 12 boys and seven girls at a state primary he taught at previously, was employed by the private school.
Walker, 58, pleaded guilty to 35 counts of indecency against children when he appeared at Oxford Crown Court. A further 20 similar charges were ordered to lie on file.
All the offences related to pupils he taught at the state primary between 1976 and 1989. Police carried out an extensive investigation and could find no evidence of wrongdoing at his next school.
Walker, a chess book author, taught junior maths and science at Rye St Antony, which has 400 pupils aged between four and 18, including 100 boarders.
Ms Jones has also raised concerns about how Walker came to be employed at her school after the first allegations were made. It emerged that he left his previous school in 1989 following a complaint made against him by a past pupil. Oxfordshire investigated and issued a formal warning.
But Ms Jones said there was no mention of this in references obtained from his previous school at the time he was taken on. There was also no record of anything against him when she checked with the Department of Education, the police, and the Department of Health in the early 1990s.
She said: “He joined shortly before I arrived with an excellent record. I later had cause to check on him when some girls complained he had looked at them in a funny way, but he was clear.”
Walker’s employment at the school only ended in November 2000 when fresh allegations were made about his conduct at the state primary.
Oxfordshire has admitted that a file which could have explained how he was able to gain employment at the private school has been destroyed.
Education spokesman John Mitchell said: “His file was destroyed three years and one term after he left us. We did not report him to police because there wasn’t the evidence to require us to do so.”
