Two Peak Academy teachers banned for encouraging pupils to fight

According to the report, one of the pupils punched the other “in the head nine or 10 times before there was any intervention”, adding it was “good fortune” there were no injuries.

The panel heard that on 21 October 2019 there was a “flare up” between the two pupils during lunch time and the pair were separated to “avoid further conflict”, with Pupil A being taken to a sensory room called “basecamp” and Pupil B told to take a walk to “help him regulate”.

But after Pupil B was unable to calm down and stated he wanted to speak to Pupil A, Lewis agreed to take him to the basecamp room and said “let’s get this sorted”.

CCTV footage showed Lewis “put his hand behind Pupil B’s back” and said something immediately before Pupil B started the attack on Pupil A.

The report said, external that “on the balance of probabilities”, as the CCTV footage had no audio recording, that Lewis said something like “fight it out”.

The two pupils then fought while Ferguson and Lewis stood and watched on from outside the door, the report said, for more than 20 seconds.

After the two pupils were separated, Ferguson took Pupil A away but did not remove them from the room, leading to a further physical fight.