David Crawford had been a teacher at Fisburn Primary School near Sedgefield, County Durham for 15 years when he took the blade and pressed it to the woman’s neck.
It happened in the school office on May 4, 2020, a misconduct hearing last month heard, when the woman was working. Crawford came in from behind, pinned her to the chair with his arm around her chest, pushed her back in the chair and put the blade, which he had used to butter some toast, to her neck.
The office door was open and pupils under seven were walking up and down the corridor at the time, the hearing was told.
“I could feel the metal being pressed into my neck. I could not move, I panicked”, the woman said.
She told a teacher misconduct panel that Crawford said he would “slash” her and left the room before she burst into tears. When he came back into the room asking to speak to her privately Crawford said he was “clowning around”, she added.
The incident was reported to HR the same day and a police probe launched a month later.
In August 2021 he was convicted of assault and ordered to pay fines and costs of £1,104.
During a disciplinary hearing in November that year Crawford did not accept the criminal verdict, the panel heard, and in an email to them ahead of the hearing last month he claimed the accusations against him were “dishonest”.
The woman, who joined the school the previous year, told a misconduct hearing last month that Crawford was “uncooperative and aggressive”. She said he “refused to follow her instructions, became angry, called her fat and sought to undermine her”.
On one occasion Crawford tampered with her chair, unscrewing the back of it, so she would fall off when she sat down, she claimed.
He did not attend the misconduct hearing which concluded last month. A report detailing its findings was published this week.
The panel said it had seen no evidence of any insight or remorse from the former teacher as it recommended he be banned from teaching.
Panel chair Emma Garrett added: “Mr Crawford was responsible for a violent offence against a colleague, involving a knife, in school, during school hours, and while children were at school.
“There was also evidence before the panel which indicated that this was not an isolated incident, and was in fact the last in a series of escalating incidents of intimidating and inappropriate behaviour by Mr Crawford towards Witness A.
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“The evidence indicated that Mr Crawford considered his actions to have been a joke and that the allegations against him were ‘dishonest’”.
Crawford will not be able to teach ever again in England after he was handed an indefinite ban.
Durham County Council, which ran Fishburn Primary at the time before it joined the Eden Academy Trust last year, has been contacted for comment.