Primary school teacher banned from the classroom after causing pupil to hit head and lying to his parents about it

A man has been banned from teaching after he was found to have caused a student to bump their head and then lied to the pupil’s parent about it.

A teaching regulation agency panel (TRA) in May concluded that Daniel Whitley, formerly a teacher at Beaver Road Primary School, Manchester, had acted dishonestly and had little remorse for his actions.

Mr Whitley had caught his foot on a chair on 28 February 2024, which struck a student, named Pupil A in the report, who sustained a bump to the head in the classroom.

During a parents evening on 4 March that same year, the pupil’s parent queried why they hadn’t received an accident reporting slip following the head injury. During the appointment, Mr Whitley alleged the injury had occurred in the playground.

The next day, he completed an accident reporting slip, which he backdated, forging a colleague’s signature. The note read: “banged head on climbing frame[,] small mark, ice pack given”.

Speaking to a separate colleague, he said he’d found the note down the back of Pupil A’s tray and gave it to them to pass on to the parent.

The parent complained the following day that the slip didn’t reflect Pupil A’s account, who said that Mr Whitley had hooked his foot on the chair and it had hit them.

“I sit next to a chair and it caught me and hit me… Mr Whitley said he would check it later and would get an ice pack but he forgot,” the pupil said, per the report.

The former teacher had said that he didn’t know who wrote the note or administered first aid for the incident, had not filled it out and did not know where to find them. He said he had no knowledge of how the note had been written.

In a meeting with other individuals from the school, he later admitted that while turning his chair to face the board, the “blue cushioned bit on the side of the chair” hit Pupil A on the left hand side of the head but he did not think it warranted a note. He later admitted to forging the note.

The school referred the incident to the TRA in October that year.

Mr Whitley admitted a year later that his behaviour had amounted to unacceptable professional conduct which could bring the profession into disrepute.

He had only started working at the school in September 2023 as a Year One class teacher.

The panel acknowledged that he was “panicked and fearful” as he forged the document, but that he was “sure in his own mind” that he knew “what he was doing was wrong” and knew the school’s safeguarding procedures as a new teacher.

It also assessed that Mr Whitley’s behaviour involved “providing repeated misinformation about a pupil’s injury and how it occurred,” meaning there was a strong public interest consideration for the safeguarding and wellbeing of pupils.

Mr Whitley will no longer be able to teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England. He can apply for the prohibition order to be set aside after 11 May 2030 at the earliest, where a panel will meet again to consider whether it should be set aside.