A former deputy headteacher who used his school laptop computer to store pictures of himself engaging in sex has been found guilty of unacceptable professional conduct.
Paul Kennaugh, the former deputy head at Marton Church of England primary in Macclesfield, Cheshire, has been given a two-year conditional registration order by England’s General Teaching Council.
He was sacked in June 2004 and has since been working as a self-employed educational consultant. Mr Kennaugh has also held an interim deputy headteacher position.
The terms of his conditional registration mean that he is banned from using any school computing equipment away from the premises and that his use of computers at school must be monitored.
Mr Kennaugh, a teacher with 14 years’ experience, joined Marton primary in January 2001 and was given a laptop computer on loan in February 2003.
When the machine was brought in for routine repairs in May 2004, a technician found a folder on the hard disk entitled “Us” and an investigation was launched.
Bradley Albuery, the GTC’s presenting officer, said: “The investigation revealed that the laptop was used to store sexual images of Mr Kennaugh and his partner engaging in sexual acts and to access websites engaging in sexual behaviour.”
Mr Kennaugh was suspended and later dismissed after making an admission to David Newcombe, headteacher at the school.
But he later withdrew his admission, saying he had regularly accessed an inappropriate website in the form of a chatroom but that it was not of a sexual nature.
Mr Newcombe told the committee: “I have no doubt in my mind that he was admitting what he did. There was no coercion, no pressure.”
Mr Kennaugh did not attend the disciplinary hearing in Birmingham last week.
Simon Thomas, his representative, said Mr Kennaugh admitted allowing his partner to store sexually explicit images of them on the school laptop after the memory on the digital camera was full.
In a written statement to the GTC, Mr Kennaugh said that he thought his partner had digitally erased the images once they had been transferred to a disk.
He said he had allowed another lover to use the laptop to gain access to the internet, and that while he did not give his permission, it must have been one of the two who visited websites of a sexual nature.
