What happened
On 17 March 2023, at a primary school in Barnsley, a young pupil became upset in the dining hall and a colleague settled her. The teacher, who ran the early years, walked over, bent to her face and shouted at her to stop making “that silly noise”.
When the child was on the floor, crying, the teacher took one hand and moved her across the dining hall and along a corridor, then lifted her under the arms and put her down in the classroom, telling her: “you do not say no to adults.”
A colleague asked her to stop and offered to take the child. She answered, as one witness recalled, that she was their boss and nobody could stop her.
Later that lunchtime a second pupil walked to the hall holding a teaching assistant’s hand. The teacher came up behind him, took both wrists, raised them above his head, lifted him off the floor and dropped him inside the hall.
The outcome
The school reported two allegations of common assault to the police that day and suspended her. In May 2023 the police took no further action and referred her to the Teaching Regulation Agency.
A panel sat in November and December 2025 and published its determination on 19 January 2026. It found the force on both children inappropriate and excessive and her guilty of unacceptable professional conduct. The order was a prohibition with a three-year review period; per the BBC, she may apply to have it lifted in January 2029.
Two particulars were not proven, including that she pulled the child from her chair.
What went wrong
Both children had already been managed without force: the first calmed by a colleague and eating, the second walking calmly with an adult who knew him. The panel found no risk to prevent, and staff were on hand.
Then she refused help. A colleague put a hand up and said “stop, I’ll take her”. The teacher looked at her, then back at the child, and carried on.
Her judgement was also made at a distance: she pre-empted the second pupil’s behaviour rather than assessing it.
What it teaches
The training was not the missing piece. The panel recorded that she was experienced and appropriately trained in positive handling and in reducing challenging behaviour. What training had not installed was a stop: the recognition that her own state had become the risk.
A technique is a small part of the job. The larger part is noticing your own escalation and knowing that handing over is competent, not humiliating.
Restraint framed as obedience is not safety. “You do not say no to adults” is authority enforced on a child’s body.
The colleague who intervened was junior, right, and overruled. A school where the most junior adult cannot stop the most senior has no control at all.
Questions for the room
- If a colleague said “stop, I’ll take over” mid-hold, would the hold stop before the argument?
- Which part of your training rehearses the adult’s own state, and the handover?
- In your records, how would anyone see a child had been calmed before force was used?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The Teaching Regulation Agency’s 36-page determination, published 19 January 2026, was read in full on 7 November 2026; the BBC’s report of the same date was read live.
Neither child is named, and the school is withheld: two early years pupils at a named school in a named town, in one lunchtime, would be identifiable locally. The teacher is named because the regulator’s determination names her. There is no conviction; the findings are the panel’s on the balance of probabilities.
Our positive handling training for schools treats the adult’s own regulation and the handover as part of the technique.
Sources
- Teaching Regulation Agency, 19 January 2026 · https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-misconduct-panel-outcome-ms-georgina-graham
- BBC News, 19 January 2026 · https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y34xrmzd5o
Reviewed 7 November 2026.