A former private school head who failed to act after a student claimed she had been raped by another pupil has been allowed to keep on teaching.

Christopher Alcock left his position as head of Queen’s College in Taunton in 2016 over allegations that he downloaded highly inappropriate material on school computers.

At a Teacher Regulation Agency hearing in Coventry, he admitted looking at sexual material on YouTube on school computers and sending inappropriate messages from his college email address and mobile phone.

Mr Alcock faced claims that he had failed to maintain professional boundaries with female students, including with a former pupil who went on to kill herself. Mr Alcock kept in touch with Juliet Crew after she had left the school and she told him of her suicidal intentions, but he did not tell anyone, insisting she had asked him not to.

Report of rape ‘mishandled’

However, the panel decided that his “intensely pastoral” approach was acceptable, and that while he “displayed some lack of judgement”, his actions were not “sufficiently serious to meet the threshold of unacceptable professional conduct”.

The panel concluded that allegations that he failed to maintain professional boundaries with two other female pupils were “not proved”.

But he was found guilty of professional misconduct over his mishandling of a report from a student that she had been raped by another student at the school.

The panel said his actions “fell significantly short of the standards expected of the profession”.

Nonetheless, the education secretary’s representative decided not to bar him from teaching, deeming it was in the public interest to let him continue.