Head teacher adapted office for regular sex sessions and stole £100,000 of school funds

A FORMER head teacher adapted his office so he could have sex and got drunk during school hours, a tribunal heard yesterday.

James Stewart, 72, stole more than £100,000 of school funds and regularly left early to go the races during his 30-year headship at Sawtry Community College in Cambridgeshire.

While there, Stewart used school funds to subscribe to a wine club, pay hotel bar bills and fund his television package. He also gave himself unauthorised pay rises and used cash to buy alcohol and go on ski trips abroad. The school was put into special measures in June 2014. Stewart set up direct debits costing £2,934.84 in total, for food, mobiles and other items, with no receipts or explanation provided. An investigation later found that he was paid a fulltime salary but worked an average of just two to three days a week.

Full details of Stewart’s lavish fraud have only come to light since a court order was lifted on a colleague also charged with fraud. Alan Stevens, the former college vice-principal, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud last month at Peterborough Crown Court.

The criminal charges were brought against the pair in Dec 2014 after an Education Funding Agency investigation following an Ofsted inspection in June 2014 which put the college into special measures.

Stewart, who resigned in July 2014, pleaded guilty to charges including one of misconduct in public office that stated he regularly had sex with an adult in his specially modified office. The charge also detailed drinking alcohol on school property and keeping others from meeting with him by shutting himself in his office for long periods of time. He also admitted five counts of fraud totalling more than £100,000.

Stevens pleaded guilty to two charges of fraud by abuse of position relating to expenses claims.

The men will be sentenced on Oct 6.