Leading headteacher John Tomsett has described how he was “massively scared and deeply frightened” when confronted by a school governors and the head of human resources at his local authority over allegations surrounding a relationship with a former pupil.

Mr Tomsett, currently on leave from his role as head of Huntington School near York, told a teacher conduct panel this morning that a kiss with the pupil on his last day at Eastbourne Sixth Form College in the early 1990s was “a peck from her to me, and then she ran off.”

He said: “I don’t remember whether it was on the lips or the cheek. It was short contact. It might have been on the lips.”

Presenting barrister for the Teaching Regulation Agency, Ben Bentley asked him whether that was the beginning of the sexual relationship with the pupil, who he had taught A-level English to. Mr Tomsett said it was “a goodbye kiss” and that he had been tearful because he was leaving an institution where he had been happy.

The head said the sexual relationship had begun following a letter the girl had sent to him at his home.

He added: “I could have ignored it and burned it and we wouldn’t have been here today. It was the significant moment in that summer which led to where we ended up.”

The panel heard earlier in the week that Mr Tomsett, a married man, would pick up the girl, aged 18, in his car and they would go for walks at local beauty spots where, on one occasion, there was “consensual oral sex and masturbation” and on another occasion he lay on top of her “rubbing up and down and simulating intercourse”.

Mr Tomsett said: “She had left college and I wasn’t working there any more, and, from my point of view, she was an adult embarking on a relationship. But from a moral point of view, for both of us it was wrong.”

He accepted his “feelings had grown” for the pupil in the April and May before he left his job in the May half-term in her second year at the sixth form. But he referred the panel to a statement she had written in her diary that said he had “remained professional.”

Mr Tomsett said he hadn’t wanted to engage in a relationship with the pupil despite seeing other colleagues “transgress”, which was something that he was “uncomfortable” with.

He said: “There was one specific teacher who began a relationship with his future wife right in the middle of her time in the sixth form and that was not picked up, but it was commonly known about.

“I understand that teacher met the parents of the student and the relationship blossomed into marriage, and I saw, as a person working there, how that went unchecked.”

He added: “Anything which would have clarified what the rules were at the time would have been welcomed in my eyes.”

Mr Tomsett, who said he was confronted about the allegations at his current school in 2016, admits engaging in a sexual relationship with the pupil during the summer in which she received her A-level results. But he denies that this amounted to professional misconduct or that it brought the teaching profession into disrepute.

He denies another allegation of failing to maintain professional boundaries by engaging in an inappropriate relationship with the pupil. The hearing is continuing.