Teacher at 'Outstanding' school banned for life after accessing pupils' Instagram pages for pleasure

That the teacher owned up to his actions before they were discovered was not enough to prevent the banning order

Hello and welcome to The Lancashire Lead.

A grim read today, I’m afraid, as we report on a teacher who has been banned from the profession for life after he reported himself for accessing pupils’ social media accounts for his own gratification.

A panel of the Teaching Regulation Agency recommended the order and that has now been signed of by their chief executive.

It found that he had shown a worrying lack of understanding about the importance of safeguarding even as he confessed what he had been doing to the school’s then-headteacher.

As a note before reading, the school in question was last inspected in December 2022 and was found to be Outstanding in all five areas.

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Teacher at ‘Outstanding’ school banned for life after accessing pupils Instagram pages for pleasure

Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy, Lancaster

By Luke Beardsworth

A teacher from Lancaster has been permanently banned from teaching after penning a letter to the former deputy headteacher where he confessed to viewing pupils’ Instagram pages for ‘sexually-motivated’ pleasure.

Jacob Woodland, now 29 and a teacher at Ripley St Thomas Church of England Academy, Lancaster, contacted the now former deputy headteacher - referred to only as Individual A - on the morning of Saturday, 24 August 2024 and said he had information that he needed to share.

The two met at what was described as a neutral location - the public car park next to Morecambe Golf Club - where Woodland would hand over a letter containing a statement confessing to using the internet to access images of former pupils.

It said: “I am truly sorry but I have done something inappropriate and I cannot live with myself without being honest. I have looked at publicly available Instagram content of some senior female pupils at school and used these to fantasise for my own pleasure.”

This sparked an investigation by Lancashire Constabulary. Woodland attended an interview, answered ‘no comment’ to all questions and no further police action was taken.