Alison Simmons
Introduction
Alison Simmons was deputy headteacher of Build a Future Independent School, a West Midlands specialist school for children excluded from mainstream education, until a Teaching Regulation Agency panel found that she allowed colleagues’ mistreatment of vulnerable pupils to continue and then lied to investigators about what she had seen. Her determination, issued on 30 January 2026 alongside those of headteacher Adam Webb and teacher Thomas Hayward, ends her teaching career in England permanently: a prohibition order with no review period and no right of restoration.
The case is a safeguarding-leadership failure story: the panel did not find that Simmons committed the physical indignities herself, but that she saw them, denied seeing them, and was therefore part of the wall of silence that let them continue.
Background Information
Build a Future Independent School served pupils with additional needs — the profile of child for whom safeguarding failures carry the gravest consequences, because such children are the least able to recognise mistreatment as mistreatment and the least likely to be believed when they report it. Simmons was deputy headteacher through the 2020-2021 academic year under headteacher Adam Webb. The school’s conduct came to the TRA in a referral that also swept up Webb and teacher Thomas Hayward, and the three determinations were published on the same day in March 2026, a packaging that itself communicates the regulator’s view that this was institutional rather than individual failure.
The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation
Allegations. The claims in this section are findings of a Teaching Regulation Agency professional conduct panel, which reported substantiating them. They are regulatory findings, not criminal convictions, and no criminal charge was brought against Simmons on this conduct.
The panel found proved that between 28 September 2020 and 28 January 2021 Simmons engaged in and/or allowed inappropriate behaviour with pupils — specifically, the panel found she brought eggs on a school trip to be thrown at pupils and/or allowed the throwing of eggs at pupils — and that she allowed and/or failed to prevent colleagues using inappropriate language about pupils. The panel also found proved the allegation that she stated to one or more colleagues that she had not witnessed and/or heard inappropriate behaviour when that was not true, a finding of dishonesty directed at the school’s own investigation.
Those findings amounted, in the panel’s judgment, to unacceptable professional conduct and conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute, and to a failure to safeguard the welfare of pupils. Her case thus combines the active — organising or permitting the egg-throwing — with the protective failure: covering it up afterwards.
Public Reaction and Consequences
The panel recommended the strongest available sanction, and the Secretary of State agreed: Simmons “is prohibited from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England”, with no review period and no entitlement to apply for restoration. The publication of the three Build a Future determinations on the same day in late March 2026 created a public record of a leadership group that failed together.
No mainstream press covered the determinations; like most TRA outcomes the publicity is the publication itself on GOV.UK, which employers and overseas regulators check during pre-appointment vetting.
Current Status
Simmons is barred from teaching for life. The prohibition order has no review period, so there is no date at which she may ask for it to be set aside, and the Secretary of State’s order removes any entitlement to apply for restoration of her eligibility to teach.
Impact on Their Career/Life
The ban ends her career in English education outright and, with the dishonesty finding, effectively forecloses other work with children or vulnerable adults, where a regulatory record of covering up mistreatment is disqualifying in practice even where a second sector’s vetting reads only for convictions. The case stands as the accountability endpoint of the Build a Future failure: the head banned, the deputy banned, the teacher banned. What it does not supply — and what the published record cannot supply — is any account of what became of the pupils, whose anonymised identities stay sealed inside the determination.
Sources
- Teaching Regulation Agency, “Teacher misconduct panel outcome: Ms Alison Simmons,” published 27 March 2026 — source