Ex-head handed teaching ban over ‘second salary’
AFORMER award-winning head teacher has been banned from the profession after it emerged he was paid two salaries, totalling £280,000.
Liam Nolan, former head of the now-defunct Perry Beeches Academy Trust, has been prohibited from teaching after a damning report found financial mismanagement.
Mr Nolan – once named Midlands Headteacher of the Year – can ask for the ban to be reviewed after two years.
Mr Nolan quit the troubled Perry Beeches chain of schools in 2016.
Pressure had been building on the then head teacher amid a string of revelations concerning the chain’s finances.
A 2016 investigation by the Education Funding Authority revealed the Trust had paid almost £1.3 million to Nexus Schools Ltd without following proper procedures.
Nexus then paid Nolan £160,000 over two years through his company, Liam Nolan Ltd, on top of his £120,000 annual salary. A Teaching Regulation Agency (TRA) report said it was “satisfied that Mr Nolan is guilty of unacceptable professional conduct”.
The report goes on to say the TRA panel found Mr Nolan guilty of a number of allegations, including not being paid through payroll with no “exceptional temporary circumstances” to justify this, and failing to ensure the payments were disclosed in the trust’s financial statements.
The report says Mr Nolan had signed a statement in the trust’s 2013-14 accounts stating that “no instances of material irregularity, impropriety or funding non-compliance had been discovered”, whereas in fact he “knew or ought to have known that this was not the case”.
Sarah Lewis, who handed down the ban on behalf of Education Secretary Damian Hinds, said: “A prohibition order would prevent Mr Nolan from teaching and would also clearly deprive the public of his contribution to the profession for the period that it is in force.
“In this case I have placed consid- erable weight on the panel’s comments concerning the lack of full insight or remorse.
“The panel has said, ‘Mr Nolan’s cavalier attitude to his role as accounting officer, which the panel found involved a lack of integrity on his part, was a significant factor in forming that opinion’.
“Mr Liam Nolan is banned from teaching indefinitely and cannot teach in any school, sixth form college, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.
“He may apply for the prohibition order to be set aside, but not until October 30, 2020, two years from the date of this order at the earliest.”
Mr Nolan qualified as a teacher in September 1989, initially working as a teacher of English and drama in several schools, before becoming a deputy head teacher in 2000.
In April 2007, he joined Perry Beeches School as head teacher.
Exam results improved to the extend that the school was recognised as “Secondary School of the Year” in 2011 and Mr Nolan was named “Headteacher of the Year in the Midlands”.